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THE DIVINE LIBRARY: | 


SUGGESTIONS 


HOW TO READ THE BIBLE. 


BY 
J. PATERSON SMYTH, B.D., LL.D., 


AUTHOR OF “HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE,” “HOW GOD INSPIRED THE 
BIBLE,” “THE OLD DOCUMENTS AND THE NEW BIBLE,” ETG 


NEW YORE: JAMES POTT & CO. 
LONDON: SAMUEL BAGSTER & SONS, LIMITED. 
DUBLIN: EASON & SON, LIMITED. 


1897. 





CopyRIGHT, 1896, 
ees 
CHARLES EASON 


a. Ey ee 
Preselof | J: iu & Co. 2 


Astor 





PREFACE. 


Se 


IT is with deep diffidence that I make this 
little attempt at teaching people how to read 
their Bibles. I am only learning how to read my 
own Bible: only groping and guessing my way. 
But I know as a Bible reader the difficulties in 
that way, and I know as a pastor some of the 
causes that hinder people everywhere from enjoy- 
ing and profiting by their Bibles as they might. 
With these I have tried to deal. May it be my 
reward that some few at least shall learn to read 
their Bibles with more interest and enjoyment as 
well as with more profit through the means of 
this little book. 

In two of the sub-sections I have used the 
thoughts and sometimes even the words of a 
larger book of mine already published, but this 
was unavoidable, as I had to deal with the same 
subjects. 


jie 


CHRISTCHURCH VICARAGE, KINGSTOWN, 
July, 1896. 


=" 
at ed as 





CONTENTS. 


PART PAGE 
I. INTRODUCTORY Essay . : . ° eal 
II, How to THINK OF THE BIBLE . . ey, 


1. The Divine Library. 

2. Given through Human Minds. 
3. Not written Originally for us. 
4. Its Teaching Progressive. 


III. ON STUDYING WITH THE MIND—INTELLI- 
GENTLY : 3 ; ? : <253 


. On Taking Pains. 

. On “ Putting Yourself in his Place.” 
. On Using our Common Sense. 

On Using our Moral Sense. 

. On Studying by “ Texts.” 

- On One-sided Truths. 


Aw WN 


IV. On STUDYING WITH THE HEART—DEVoO- 
TIONALLY. ; : : : me LO7 


. Devotional Study. 

. “ Acquaint thyself with God.” 

“He that Willeth to do, he shall Know.” 
. Study Regularly. 

. Study Practically. 

. Study Prayerfully. 


An Pwd 


PRAYERS, . ° ° ° ° ‘ ale 7 


WE SEARCH THE WORLD FOR TRUTH: WE CULL 
THE GOOD, THE PURE, THE BEAUTIFUL 

FROM GRAVEN STONE AND WRITTEN SCROLL, 
FROM ALL OLD FLOWER FIELDS OF THE SOUL; 
AND WEARY SEEKERS OF THE BEST, 

WE COME BACK LADEN FROM OUR QUEST, 

TO FIND THAT ALL THE SAGES SAID 

IS IN THE BOOK OUR MOTHERS READ. 


Whittier : 
“ Miriam.” 


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PART I. 


INTRODUCTORY, ESSAY. 


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A MODERN English Novelist in one of her books 
attempts to depict an abnormal specimen of 
humanity —a man without a soul. He has 
intellectual faculties keener and more powerful 
than any of his fellows, but he is utterly desti- 
tute of the spiritual faculty—the Soul, the Con- 
science, the Moral Sense—call it what you will— 
the faculty by means of which men perceive 
rightness or wrongness, moral beauty or deform- 
ity, in actions or words. 

I refer to this in order to emphasise the broad 
distinction between intellectual and spiritual per- 
ception. In all practical study, whether of the 
Bible or of the facts of daily life around us, we 
must exercise the two distinct powers, the Intel- 
lectual and the Spiritual, the Mind and the Con- 


science. . By the one we apprehend TRUTH AND 
ak 


2 HOW OVREAD SIT EA BIBL Es 


FALSEHOOD ; by the. other we apprehend RIGHT 
AND WRONG. Whether at bottom they should 
be regarded as different faculties, or merely as 
different exercises of the same faculty, is a meta- 
physical question that need not concern us here. 
We are at least conscious of a distinction be- 
tween them as definite as that between Sight and 
Taste. As Sight can perceive an apple on the 
table but only Taste can discern whether it is 
bitter or sweet, so the Intellectual faculty can 
take cognisance of certain teachings or doings, 
but only the Spiritual can recognise their moral 
beauty or deformity. 

In writing about the study of the Bible the 
province of these two faculties must be clearly 
distinguished, although in their working they are 
so closely combined. The Intellectual has to 
take cognisance of the facts and to ascertain 
their relations to each other. And while it is 
thus with clear cold gaze moving amongst the 
facts of sin, and penitence, and faith, and self- 
sacrifice, and the dealings of God in relation to 
men, the other faculty moves beside it, tasting, 


as it were, the quality of those facts, keenly sen- 


INTRODOCTORY ESSAY; 3 


sitive to whatsoever things are “pure and lovely 
and honourable and of good report,” vibrating 
responsive to beautiful deeds and thoughts as an 
/Eolian harp to the wind. 

For example, in reading, say, the close of St. 
Luke’s Gospel, the mind apprehends clearly the 
sequence of the events and their relations to 
each other, the story of the Last Supper, the 
midnight scene in Gethsemane, the seizure of 
Jesus, and the trial, and the crowd on the hill of 
Calvary watching through the long hours of His 
dying, and listening to the last words which He 
spake. 

And side by side with it, almost interwoven 
with it as it were, goes the Spiritual perception, 
feeling the beauty of His tenderness for the dis- 
ciples, admiring His calm dignity, rousing our 
enthusiasm for the nobleness of His self-sacrifice, 
bringing the tears into our eyes for His sorrow 
and His pain, bowing our hearts in adoring love 
responsive to that love which could bear all for 
our sake. 

Now it is most important that doth these facul- 
ties, the Intellectual and the Spiritual, should be 


4 HOW TO READ THEVBIBSELE, 


diligently exercised in the study of the Bible. 
If either be neglected the result will be but error 
and confusion. A very godly man who is stupid 
and illogical will make very great mistakes about 
the ‘meaning “of the Bibles i Avweryscleverstnan 
who has no enthusiasm for righteousness will see 
in the Bible nothing but an ordinary book. Two 
things therefore are requisite if the Bible is to be 
really interesting and profitable to us. It must 
be read— 

I. WITH THE MIND—INTELLIGENTLY. 

IJ. WITH THE HEART—DEVOTIONALLY. 
In other words, there>-must be clear,” careful 
thought, and there must be earnest, devotional 
feeling, and either of these will not suffice with- 


out the other. 


Ne: 


The first of these I desire especially to em- 
phasise, not that it is by any means the more 
important of the two, but that it is much the 
more likely to be neglected, and that its neglect 
is the chief reason why many earnest readers of 
the Bible fail to find in it the interest and enjoy- 


INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 5 


ment which they desire. It is not too much to 
say that there is scarcely any widely read book 
so unintelligently studied as is the Bible by the 
great bulk of its readers, even by those who 
really love it; that if people were to study any 
other portion of literature on the same methods 
as many study their Bible, we should certainly 
not expect them to find much interest or profit 
in such study. 

Let me illustrate this. Before me lies a collec- 


tion of English books :— 


KInG ALFRED'S LAWS. 

THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 
GROSSETESTE’S LETTERS. 

THE CANTERBURY TALES. 

STRYPE’S ANNALS. 

LATIMER’S SERMONS, 

MILTON’S PARADISE LOST.. 

THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. — 
ENGLISH BALLAD POETRY. 

NEALE’S HISTORY OF THE PURITANS. 
THE IDYLLS OF THE KING. 
BINGHAM’S ENGLAND UNDER THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER. 


Now if I take these books one by one in their 
rightful order, if I place each in its true historical 


setting, if I find out what I can about the object 


6 HQWAOREAD A ESB BIL, 


of each, the contemporary history, the customs 
and modes of thought of the people, if I try to 
think myself into the feelings of the poets and 
chroniclers, and into the position of the various | 
characters: referred toy 1 “shall have 4a wery 1n- 
teresting and profitable study in English history 
and literature. 

But suppose this case instead. An educated 
community—say in China—receives this collec- 
tion of books. They first translate them into 
their Chinese language, rendering all, history and 
poetry alike, into one uniform prose, and print- 
ing them in any order one after another in a 
single volume as if they had been parts of the 
selfsame work from the beginning. Next, for 
convenience of reference, being a very methodi- 
cal people, they cut up the whole into a thou- 
sand sections of uniform length, dividing it often 
without very much regard to the sense, and then 
take to reading these sections straight through 
without any inquiry about the writers or the 
circumstances of the time or the .people about 
whom they were written; without any distinc- 


tion between one author and another, between 


TNE RODOUCTOMYS bool Y, 7 


prose and poetry, between the eighth and the 
eighteenth centuries. 

Would this, think you, be a very intelligent 
method of study? Would the methodical daily 
reading over of these thousand sections again 
and again give very clear ideas about the teach- 
ing of these books? 

It seems to me, jreader, that we have little 
cause to smile at such a method of study. 
here “has come down to us in the Bible a 
collection of ancient literature ranging over a 
period of 1200 years. It consists of different 
books written at different times for different 
people, under different circumstances and often 
with very different purposes. It embraces every 
variety of composition — History, Biography, 
Letters, Sermons, Poetry, Drama. Some of the 
books were written in time of war, some in peace 
and prosperity, some in the hopeful founding of 
an infant church, some in righteous anger at a 
nation’s sin. They are largely coloured, too, by 
the character and circumstances of the various 
writers—the calm statesman—the fiery warrior 


—the enthusiastic poet—the young priest con- 


8 HOWTO READUARPTEIBL ER 


secrated to God from his childhood—the world- 
weary old king to whom all things seem vanity 
—the rustic unlettered provincial—the broad- 
minded cultured scholar—the stern denouncer 
of the wrath of God, and the gentle prophet 
spirit sorrowing lovingly over his faithless wife, 
and thus learning God’s pity for his faithless 
country. 

Surely it must be clear to any one that for the 
intelligent study of such a literary collection, it 
is necessary to discriminate between the different 
books—to consider the time and the circum. 
stances under which each was written—to re- 
member that they were not originally addressed 
to us, but to other people—to learn all that is 
possible about the history of each—and thus try 
to understand, to get in touch with, to put our- 
selves in the place of the ancient authors who 
wrote and the ancient peoples who received each 
of these books long ago. 

Perhaps some readers may demur to this con- 
clusion and say, “ The study of the Bible is quite 
a different matter from the study of secular his- 
tory and literature. The Bible is to be regarded 


WNIRODUCTORY £SSAY, 9 


as the teaching of God Himself, not as that of a 
number of separate human authors. It reveals 
the eternal truths of God's love to man, God’s 
hatred of sin, the eterrial contrasts between 
Righteousness and Unrighteousness, Obedience 
and Disobedience, Purity and Lust. It is God’s 
announcement to poor sinful men that He is 
ready to help them when they are weak, and to 
raise them when they are fallen, and that He is 
a thousand times more concerned for their salva- 
tion than they are themselves. So that, it may 
be said, it is a matter of no consequence as to 
the order of the books, or the surroundings of 
the writers, or the connection in which these 
truths were taught to their original recipients.” 
There would be force in this objection if God’s 
inspired teaching had come down to us in certain 


formal propositions such as 


GOD LOVES MANKIND. 

GOD HATES WRONGDOING. 

GOD RULES IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN. 
GOD FORGIVES WHEN MEN REPENT. 


If the Bible were thus a series of separate 


10 HOW TOREAD CT EeRSD IL 


texts and statements, each a complete truth in 
itself, incapable of being misunderstood, and 
needing no qualification, then it would probably 
matter little when, or how, or by whom these 
statements were first communicated, or under 
what circumstances they came to their original 
readers. We: should only needy to e098 toy our 
Bibles just as we should go to a medicine chest 
and pick out the correctly labelled little packet 
of truth suitable for our present needs, with no 
concern at all about its date, or its writer, or the 
connection in which it was originally given. 

But this is not at all God’s method in Revela- 
tion. Not in complete texts and proverbs, not 
in golden aphorisms or finished creeds, but 
through the medium of history, and dialogue, 
and poetry, and drama, through the story of 
men’s lives and troubles, and the cries of noble 
souls struggling towards the light, does He 
vouchsafe the glimpses of His truth to men. 
From the incidents of the patriarchal history, 
from the story of the Jewish kingdom, from the 
fervid utterances of prophet and psalmist, from 


the intercourse of Jesus Christ with the Judean 


INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. ers 


peasants, and the letters of His apostles about 
various questions of interest to the early Church 
—from all these sources men have to form for 
themselves their ideas of God and of His will 
towards man. 

Surely it is very possible to form these ideas 
wrongly if we do not study the Bible intelli- 
gently, taking into account all the various cir- 
cumstances above referred to—in fact, if we do 
not study the Bible'just as we should study any 
other similar collection of writings. Now see 
what has been done instead. First our ancestors 
have taken these varied books, poetry and _his- 
tory and prophecy alike, translated them into 
uniform English prose, bound them into a single 
volume, often quite out of their proper order, 
and arbitrarily divided them into chapters and 
verses, not always with very much regard to the 
sense. Then some of us, their descendants, have 
taken this volume as if it had been always one 
book from the beginning—as if, clasped and 
covered complete, it had dropped down from 
Heaven, like the image of the goddess Diana. 


We read its sections straight through, the first 


12 HOW TO (READ THE VBIBLE, 


chapter of Job after the last of Esther, the begin- 
ning of Isaiah after the end of Solomon’s Song, 
We do not stop at the beginning of each to say, 
“Here is an entirely new. book, *whttensbyea 
man of different character, written for different 
people, under different circumstances, and _pro- 
bably with quite a different purpose from the 
last} that sleshavereadso= Wihatecanm luimamcL 
about all these things ? How can I best under- 
stand and enter into the feelings of the writer 
and the readers, and the various characters men- 
tioned in the book ?”’ 

There is a certain amount of mental effort 
necessary for this, and most of us are rather lazy 
where mental effort is required. And so there 
has grown up amongst us an indolent, unintelli- 
gent method of Bible reading. We are content 
to read mechanically through our daily portions 
of Scripture to find nice texts and pet passages 
here and there, and to apply them piously, ac- 
cording to our own notions, without troubling to 
find out what exactly that ancient writer whom 
we are studying was likely to have had in his 


mind, and how exactly he meant those ancient 


INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, 13 


readers of his to understand his words. And 
thus we lose much of the interest and the profit 
of our Bible reading, and are, in a large measure, 


frustrating the method and purposes of God. 


S 3- 


So far for the first requisite—clear, careful 
thinking, studying wth the mind, intelligently. 
There is less need of dwelling on the second, 
studying reverently, devotionally, wzth the heart, 
since its necessity must at once be evident to all. 

It is altogether for the sake of its spiritual 
teaching that the Bible has been given, in order 
that the Divine life within us may be nourished 
by its words. There is in every man a some- 
thing higher than his carnal passions, higher than 
his intellectual powers, a spark of the Divine 
nature which remains to humanity, like the 
white rose which in the Arab legend Eve is said 
to have carried away with her out of the garden 
of God. This spark of the Divine may be fanned 
into a flame by the breath of the Holy Spirit, or 
may be dulled almost to extinction by neglect 


14 HOWTO READ MIE BIBLE, 


and by sin. In the worst of men it will break 
out at times in admiration for what is generous, 
or unselfish, or brave. In the man in whom it 
has been developed by the power of the Holy 


Ghost, it becomes the noblest, grandest thing the 





world can show—a God-possessed human soul. 
And itis ‘especially dor “thes purpose: sqiseiiis 
development that the Bible has been given. 
Therefore the right moral attitude is of such 
transcendent importance. Though the Intellec- 
tual aspect of Bible reading must not be ignored, 
yet the Spiritual is by far the more important of 
the two. Such is the peculiar property of God’s 
Word, that the stupidest and most unintelligent 
reading, if done in a faithful, dévotional spirit, 
cannot fail to win much blessing, whilst the 
wisest and most critical study without honest 
desire for the guiding from above, is utterly use- 
less for the edifying of the soul. We must insist 
on the importance of intelligently exercising the 
mind in studying the Bible; but we must always 
remember that it is especially to the heart that 
its teaching is directed, and that it is only in so 


far as it influences the heart that it accomplishes 


INARODOGLOR VIE SSA V, 15 


the purpose for which God has given it. There- 
fore must our Bible reading be above all things 
reverent and devotional, with earnest prayer for 
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, with unbiassed 
heart seeking only to find God’s will with the 
honest purpose of doing that will when we have 
found it. Thus only will it be really profitable ; 
thus only will it lift us up towards God; thus 
only rouse in our hearts that love and trust and 
enthusiastic devotion to Him that will make our 
religion the very joy of our lives. 

In the following pages it is intended to de- 
velop the thoughts suggested by this introduc- 
tory essay, dealing separately with the Intellec- 
tual and Spiritual sides of Bible study, or, rather, 
since they are not capable of actual separation, 
beginning with one, the Intellectual, and shading 
off gradually into the other. 





PART II. 


HOW TO THINK OF THE BIBLE. 





Ik. 
THE DIVINE LIBRARY. 


IT was a very suggestive title that St. Jerome 
in the fourth century gave to the collection of 
sacred books, the Divine Library (4zbliotheca 
Divina). It indicates both the diversity and the 
unity of Scripture, suggesting on the one hand 
the idea of the different, separate, often uncon- 
nected books, and on the other that of the unity 
of spirit running through them all and forming 
them into a perfect whole. It reminds us that 
the Scriptures are “ manifold by the variety of 
times and circumstances in which the several 
parts had their rise, yet ove by the inspiring 
presence of the same spiritual life.”’ 

In ancient times the manifoldness was the 
prominent thought. The ancient Jews had no 


singular name for the collection, nor for centuries 
19 


20 HOW OnE AD RIAL 


any thought of it as a perfect and completed 
whole. Even our Lord and the apostles quote 
the Old Testament as the Writings, the Scrip- 
tures, or sometimes as the Law, the Prophets, 
and the Psalms. In our day this manifoldness 
is almost forgotten. We have got so accustomed 
to see all the different treatises bound up to- 
gether between the same covers, and the whole 
collection called by a singular, not a plural, name,} 
that we naturally think of the whole as one single 
book. We-need the frequent reminder that this 
collection of literature which we call the Bible is 
not one book, but a library of separate books, 
written at different times, by different authors, 
for different readers, and often with widely 
different purposes. There was no thought in the 


minds of the inspired writers that they were 


t About the fourth century A.D. Greek writers came to use the 
term “The Books ” (4zdéza, plural) for the Bible. In process of 
time this name, with many others of Greek origin, passed into 
the vocabulary of the Western Church; and in the thirteenth 
century by a happy solecism the neuter plural came to be 
regarded as a feminine singular, and “ The Books ” became, by 
common consent, “ The Book ” (4zé/za, singular), in which form 
the word has passed into the languages of modern Europe. 
(Westcott’s Bible in the Church. Introd.) 


THE DIVINE LIBRARY. 21 


preparing a Bible for all the ages. Each wrote 
for the temporary passing circumstances of his 
time. The prophet uttered his burning words 
to rouse or rebuke or comfort the people of his 
own day. The letters of the apostles were called 
forth by the passing troubles and occasional 
wants of one or another of the early Churches. 
As far as the intention of the writers was con- 
cerned, the books were for the most part as 
separate and unconnected writings as that collec- 
tion of English literature which has been already 
referred to. 

Now, for the intelligent study of the Bible this 
view of it must be well kept in mind. We must 
try to acquire the habit, when beginning any 
fresh book, of thinking of it as a separate work, 
and inquiring as to the period to which it be- 
longs, the character of its author, the sort of 
people for whom it was written, the purpose of 
the book, and the peculiar circumstances, if any, 
that called it forth. This habit will be a con- 
siderable help to a right understanding of the 
Bible. In the Epistles and the Poetical and Pro- 
phetical books it is especially important, and 


22 HOW STORL EAD THE OLDL ES 


even where, in the case of some particular book, 
we are quite unable to satisfy our inquiries, the 
very effort to do so will help us towards the right 
mental attitude for understanding the book. 

Gradually, too, this view of the Bible will force 
upon us a stronger and more abiding conviction 
of its Divine origin. When we see in the darkest 
ages of the world these books arising one by one, 
distinct from all other books, infinitely superior 
to the spirit of the time—when we see many 
different writers, often with hundreds of years 
between them, without any designed connection 
with each other, without any thought that they 
were writing the great Lesson Book of Humanity 
—and yet their separate works when brought 
together forming a complete definite whole, as 
if written by a single hand, a perfect system of 
teaching with all its parts harmonising with and 
supplementing each other—the conviction must 
grow stronger and more constant within us that 
such things do not come by chance, that these 
separate workers must have wrought upon a 
perfect plan, invisible to themselves, which was 
traced by the finger of God. 


La 


GIVEN THROUGH HUMAN MINDS. 


“THE Law,” said the old Jewish rabbis, “ speaks 
ie thee tOneucsom thessonseof mene And, it 
were better for the Bible had the Jewish rabbis, 
and their Christian followers too, kept that fact 
always clearly in mind. Fora great deal of 
the zaturalness of the Bible has been lost, owing 
to the rigid theories which have so long pre- 
vailed, and which have made men afraid of recog- 
nising the human element in Scripture. 

No candid, thoughtful student can study the 
phenomena presented by the Bible without find- 
ing in it a decidedly human element. If he be 
Hirao it ance tryetosionore: it,othes bible. be- 
comes a puzzle to him. If he reverently recog- 
nise it the Bible becomes more simple and _ beau- 


tiful. But however he may treat it, it is there 
23 


24 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE. 


all the same. The very idea of inspiration im- 
plies it, for the inspiration of a book is the result 
of contact between the Spirit of God and the 
human mind and conscience of the writer. The 
Bible itself, too, reminds us that they were men, 
holy MEN, who “spake as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost.” And as we turn to read it we 
find a large part of it taken up with the expres- 
sion of feelings that are distinctively human, 
loneliness and sorrow, hope and fear, impatience 
and anguish. We call it all the Word of God, 
and in one sense rightly, as being all inspired of 
Him. But we must see that it is in a great 
measure the word of man as well—the cry of 
the child in appeal to his Father, the prayers for 
help, the doubtings and questionings, the yearn- 
ings after the Unseen God. The writers express 
feelings just like our own, and we constantly 
acknowledge it. Is it not a large part of the 
charm in such a book as the Psalms that it ac- 
curately expresses what we ourselves have felt 
over and over again? And how utterly unna- 
tural it becomes if men insist on reading such 


utterances as if they had no human element in 


GIVEN THROUGH HUMAN MINDS. 25 


them, as if they were something dictated from 
outside by God, with none of the writer’s per- 
sonality in them at all! It is evident, too, that 
in many other respects the inspired books re- 
semble ordinary uninspired works. The _ lan- 
guage and composition are not always of the 
highest order. Each writer has his own peculi- 
arities of thought and style, his own peculiar 
excellences and defects, like any modern writer. 
The historian had to make his books as do our 
own historians to-day—-he had to gather his in- 
formation from old registers and chronicles 
already existing, from his own observation and 
memory, from the report of those about him. 
The writings, too, are often tinged by the ideas 
of the time, and the author’s scientific knowledge 
seems often circumscribed by the same horizon 
as that of his contemporaries. 

If, then, we would rightly enter into the minds 
of the inspired writers of Scripture, we must not 
think of them as mere passionless machines, as 
merely the “pen in the hands of God” who 
dictated the books, as merely the “lyre which 
was played upon by the Holy Spirit,” We must 


26 HOWTO TREADS Ti be Bi BLE: 


think of them as men giving expression to the 
thoughts and feelings stirring within them, men 
with lke weakness and passions as_ ourselves, 
though purified and ennobled by the influence of 
the Holy Spirit—men, each with his own peculi- 
arities of manner and disposition, each with his 
own education or want of education, each with 
his own way of looking at things, each influenced 
differently from others by the different experi- 
ences and discipline of his hfe. Their inspiration 
did not involve a suspension of their natural 
faculties. It did not destroy their personality 
nor abolish the varieties of training and charac- 
ter. It did not take all the naturalness, all the 
humanity, all the passionate impulses out of 
them. It did not make them into machines. It 
left them men. | 

To say all this is not to put a slight on the 
Bible, as some people seem to think, any more 
than it would be a slight on the earth to say that 
it is not a perfect sphere; it is but to explain it, 
to show the truth about it, to make it better 
understood. It is no honour to the Bible to 


ignore its human side, to insist that the writers 


GIVEN THROUGH HUMAN MINDS. 27 


were only God’s machines. Rightly understood, 
the presence of the human element should in- 
crease instead of lowering its value as a book of 
religion for men. God used human minds as the 
channels of His truth probably because thus it 
could be better received and assimilated by the 
human minds to which it came. He used the 
men best fitted for each country and each age. 
He inspired various characters and tempera- 
Mien? seme earch Osemmenirol-ditterenty.tones iof 
thought to present the different aspects of His 
many-sided truth, and thus to supplement the 
teachings of each other. 

So, too, the Divine Spirit came to men at vari- 
GlUsecrisessiny their dives. valle; camesto, them? in 
joy, in sorrow, in doubt, in despair, in the confi- 
dence of faith, in the fierce struggle with temp- 
tation. Through the human spirit in its varied 
states He spake to the universal human spirit as 
it could never have been spoken to otherwise. 
He spake through the passionate indignation of 
Isaiah and the sorrowful plaints of Jeremiah over 
the wickedness of his race. He touched the 


hearts of the ancient Psalmists, and we hear the 


28 HOWL OCR EAD Chit wel iid. 


sounds of the struggle with their sin and their 
childlike crying after the living°> God. “He :in- 
spired the stern pathos of Hosea sorrowing over 
the greatest trouble that could come to man— 
a wife unfaithful to her marriage vow—and by 
means of his sorrow and his changeless love 
learning Jehovah's feelings towards His unfaith- 
ful people. 

If, then, God has thus used human minds in 
order that He might more fittingly communicate 
His teaching to men, it is evident that the ignor- 
ing of these human minds can only be a source 
of confusion in our study of Scripture. How 
can the student understand the letters of St. 
Paul, so full of the writer’s personality—how can 
he enter into the minds of the Psalmists, or the 
questions of Job feeling after a solution of the 
mystery of life—what clear meaning can he at- 
tach to expressions of sorrow and indignation 
and penitence and prayer—if they are all to him 
mere words dictated from outside, in which the 
writer had no part except to say them or write 
them down? In some portions of the prophecies, 


indeed, the spirit of the prophet is so possessed 


GIVEN THROUGH HUMAN MINDS. 29 


by the Holy Ghost that the human seems 
scarcely to come into action at all. But this is 
not sufficient for an exception to the rule that 
there can be no true and intelligent study of 
Scripture where the human mind of the writer 
is ignored. 

How much clearer and simpler and more 
natural would the Bible become to us if we 
habitually thought of it thus in connection with 
its human writers, recognising how beautifully 
God has used them for His purpose! How 
touchingly would come to us in its pages the cry 
of the human spirit in its ever-changing moods if 
we recognised it as the cry of a human spirit like 
our own not ceasing to be human when inspired 
by the Holy Ghost! With what interest we 
should watch men struggling with temptation or 
questioning of the mysteries of life around them 
(I refer here especially to the Old Testament 
writers) if we felt that they were imperfect men 
like ourselves, in whom God’s great work of 
teaching and character-making was only in pro- 
gress—men who were being ennobled by the 
Spirit of God and inspired by Him to speak 


30 HOW LO READ AE DIBLE, 


for the teaching of humanity, but who under 
His influence uttered naturally the thoughts 
and aspirations stirring within them, not some 
words dictated to them mechanically from on 
high ! 

When we met with psalms of the warlike ages 
that seemed not gentle and loving enough for 
the spirit of Christianity, how we.should sym- 
pathise with the stern, indignant patriots as men 
roused to a Godlike indignation at the cruelty 
and oppression and hypocrisy around them! 
We should think of similar cases in modern 
history, as of the godly men in the Indian Mutiny, 
whose fierce prayers went up to Heaven as they 
saw the helpless children impaled on bayonet 
points and the outraged women crucified against 
the walls. And our sympathies would go back 
to these ancient men living under the influence 
of the Divine Spirit in the dark ages of the world 
—men willing to lay down their lives for their 
country and their God, whose fiery warrior in- 
stincts cried for vengeance on the hypocrite and 
the oppressor as the only way to sweep hypocrisy 
and oppression from the earth. 


GIVEN THROUGH HUMAN MINDS. 31 


And when we turned to read the Epistles of 
St. Paul (thinking of them by the homelier title 
of “letters”’), how we should feel ourselves 
getting in touch with the great, large-hearted old 
man who in a very passion of the “ enthusiasm 
of humanity” was willing to lose his heaven 
for the sake of his people !1 As we studied 
reverently the deep, truths that God had im- 
parted to him we should sympathise with the 
quick play of human feelings which he exhibits. 
And things would seem to us quite natural and 
fitting that puzzle other men in the God-inspired 
writings —his impétuous outburst, ‘I speak 
as a ‘fool”; his mention of the cloak left be 
hind at Troas; the little messages of remem- 
brance to the old friends who loved him just 
such as we should write ourselves in a letter 
to-day. 

And instead of lowering the Bible in any way 
for us, these things would teach us how sweetly 
simple and natural is the operation of God in the 


inspiring of His teachers. No fierce, convulsive 


1 Rom. ix. 3. 


32 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE. 


disturbance of their lives, no maddened eyes nor 
frenzied shouts, but the power Divine coming 
upon them, as upon nature around us, quietly, 
gently, “not with observation.” 

God forbid that any words used here to 
promote naturalness and reality in the study of 
the Bible should detract from the deep reverence 
with which it should be regarded! It is neces- 
sary in our day to emphasise strongly the human 
side of Holy Scripture. It is the side which up 
to this has been most ignored by religious 
people, and the ignoring of it has tended to 
make Bible reading unintéresting and unreal. 
But in guarding against this error of under- 
estimating the human there is possible a far . 
worse error—under-estimating the Divine. We 
must protect ourselves carefully against that. 
While recognising to the full the human medium 
through which the Divine has come to us, 
we must always remember that it is only a me- 
dium, that that which is beneath and behind 
and within it is the power of the Spirit of 
God. 


We cannot draw a line between the Divine 


GIVEN THROUGH HUMAN MINDS. 33 


and the human. We cannot say of any part, 
This is Divine, or that is human. In some parts, 
as the Gospels, there seems more of the Divine; 
in others, as the Chronicles, more of the human. 
It is as sunlight through a painted window. The 
light must come to us coloured by the medium. 
We cannot get it any other way. In some parts 
the medium is denser and more imperfect; in 
others the golden glory comes dazzlingly through. 
The light cannot be. separated from the tint 
given by the medium. Every ray is mingled 
lisht) ands colour. 7 It “1s* foolish to. ignore :the 
existence of this medium. To do so but leads to 
misunderstanding and disquiet and wonder that 
the light is not absolutely pure. But how much 
more foolish to ignore the light and deem that 
the tinted dome is luminous in itself, that the 
light of heaven has only come from earth! 

Let every student of Scripture be here on his 
guard. The more he habituates himself to read 
his Bible naturally and sympathetically, recog- 
nising fully the human side of it, the more neces- 
sary it is to remember with reverence and awe 


that God is, in the truest sense, its author; the 


3 


34. HOW TO READ THE BIBLE. 


more he recognises the personality of the writers, 
the more needful to keep in mind that the 
writings “came not in old time by the will of 
man, but holy men of God spake as they were 


moved by the Holy Ghost.” 


IIT. 
NOT WRITTEN ORIGINALLY FOR US. 


REMEMBER in reading any particular book that 
it is not you, but other and different people, 
that the writer or speaker had originally in view, 
though Divine inspiration has so influenced the 
book as to make it also suitable for you and, in 
varying degrees, for all classes of men in all ages 
of the world. There is no reason to think that 
the inspired writers knew of God’s design of a 
great Lesson Book for all mankind. For the 
most part, each of them wrote for the people and 
the circumstances of his own time. One had 
before his mind a host of liberated slaves about 
to become a nation; another a set of prosperous 
hypocrites and formalists who were forgetting 
God; a third was thinking of the crowd of sor- 


rowful captives in Babylon. St. Paul wrote one 
35 


36 HOW LOFMRBAD SIH ELeSIBL 


letter to an earnest young clergyman,! who was 
to him as his own son; another to the master of 
a runaway slave ;* another to a congregation of 
impulsive Celtic people? who were vexing and 
disappointing him. When reading these epistles, 
remember it was not you, it was this young 
clergyman — this owner of the slave — these 
troublesome converts—that he had before his 
mind when writing. Therefore you had better 
keep them before your mind when reading if you 
want to enter thoroughly into the feelings and 
thoughts of St. Paul. Do not read as if all the 
letters had been addressed originally to yourself. 
Try to think what the words would mean in the 
mind of the writer and of the original receivers. 
It will give a new interest to the writings ; it will 
prevent their becoming monotonous to you; it 
will help you to understand their meaning; it 
will reveal to you the significance of many little 
touches which otherwise you would entirely 
miss ; it will help to keep you from misquoting 
Scripture in a sense which the writers never in- 
tended ; and perhaps, too, it will impress you 


1 Timothy. 2 Philemon. 3 The Galatians. 


NOT WHRITILN ORIGINALLY FOR. OS... 37 


with awe for that Divine inspiration which has 
made these occasional utterances of ancient days 
the text-book for ever for the guidance of man. 
At the same time, of course, it must never be 
forgotten that He who inspired the minds of the 
writers is He who can see the end from the 
beginning, and who designed that the words ad- 
dressed to the old-world men should be helpful 
to all men in all ages to come. What was said 
to the obstinate or the penitent or the troubled 
or the faithful in ancient days is for the obsti- 
nate and the penitent and the troubled and the 
faithful in our days as well. Psalm and. pro- 
phecy and history and epistle are to be applied 
to ourselves when the circumstances correspond. 
Christ’s words to the disciples and to the mourn- 
ers belong to disciples and mourners still. His 
words to the little children belong to our little 
children. ‘‘ Whatsoever things were written 
aforetime were written for our learning, that we 
through patience and comfort of the Scriptures 


might have hope.” 


IV. 
ITS TEACHING PROGRESSIVE. 


OF all the difficulties which can confront the 
student of the Bible, the most formidable is that 
which arises in his mind when some of its utter- 
ances seem to him to fall below the level of the 
enlightened Christian conscience. He finds in 
the Old Testament usages permitted which 
would not be sanctioned by the civilisation of 
England to-day; he finds sentiments expressed 
—as, for instance, in some of the Psalms—which 
he feels could not win the approval of Christ. 
And inevitably the disturbing question miust 
come to him, if he be an honest, fearless thinker, 
“How can these things be inspired of God?” 
Some time since a devout Christian lady, an 
earnest student of her Bible, came to the writer 


with an anxious mind. A sceptical friend had 
38 


LISPTEACHING PROGRESSIVE. 39 


been trying to disturb her faith in God and in 
the Bible. He showed her how slavery was per- 
mitted in the inspired teaching, and plurality of 
wives, and how a man was allowed to put away 
his wife by merely giving her a writing of di- 
vorcement. He pointed to the prophetess pro- 
nouncing her benediction on the bloody treach. 
ery of Jael, and the Psalmist uttering prayers for 
vengeance on his foes. ‘“ And that,” said he 
triumphantly, “is the God of your devotion, that 
is the Bible which you speak of as inspired !”’ 
This is but an ordinary instance of the evil 
of reading these things without understanding 
them. Thousands of earnest Christians are 
every day having their faith in God and in the 
Bible disturbed by such difficulties. In olden 
days the evil was, if possible, even worse, when, 
instead of seeing these things to be wrong, and 
wondering that they should be attributed to 
God, men with less instructed consciences 
received these utterances of the ancient ages ay 
God’s teaching for themselves; when polygamy 
and slavery were justified by the example of the 


patriarchs; when poor innocent women were 


40 HOW a OCR EADS AIAG BLE 


burned as witches on the authority of a verse in 
Leviticus; when the bloody slaughters of the 
Crusades and the atrocious massacre of St. 
Bartholomew were hailed by loud Te Deums in 
the churches, and compared to the zeal of Old 
Testament days. 

Surely it is necessary that readers of the Bible 
should learn how to regard these -difficulties. 
They have no need to be frightened by them 
as though they were destructive to their faith. 
They have no need to slur them over, and try to 
forget them. It needs but a looking at them 
from the right point of view; it needs but a true 
understanding of the object of Scripture, and 
these bogies will vanish away from us like ghosts 
in the daylight. 


S a2; 


What, then, is this right point of view, and 
how shall we attain to it? The right view is the 
historical view of the Bible, and the way to 
attain to it is by thinking of the world as the 


UISPREACTINGEEROGRESSIVE. 41 


great school of God, where gradually, patiently 
through all the ages He has been training 
humanity for nobleness of life. The Bible [or 
rather the Old Testament, for it is there mainly 
that these difficulties come in] is to be regarded 
not as a series of perfect precepts equally appli- 
cable to all men in all ages of the world, but 
rather as the story of God’s gradual education of 
man. We must remember that what is true of 
the development and education of the individual, 
is equally true of the development and education 
of the race. The individual man is capable of 
continual development from the cradle to the 
grave. Now this is equally true of the race as a 
whole. There is a capacity for continual de- 
velopment, each generation incorporating into 
itself the results of the preceding generation’s 
growth. So that we may picture to ourselves 
the human race as a COLOSSAL MAN, whose life 
reaches on for thousands of years. The succes- 
sive generations of men are days in this MAN’S 
life. The discoveries and inventions of the 
different epochs are HIS works.. The creeds and 


doctrines and principles and opinions are HIS 


42 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE, 


thoughts. The states of society at different 
times are HIS manners. HE grows in know- 
ledge, in self-control, just as we do. And HIS 
education is in the same way, and for the same 
reason, precisely the same as ours.1 

Now think of God through all the ages edu- 
cating his human race as we have to educate a 
little child to-day. Then think sow.we have to 
educate the little child. We have to recognise 
the necessity of gradual growth and gradual de- 
velopment. We know that we must begin at 
the very lowest rudiments, that very crude and 
imperfect conceptions must satisfy us at first. 
Though all the glory of the highest knowledge is 
before the child, he can only partially receive it 
until his mind has grown. And so we have to 
begin at the A BC, and to go on and wait on 
patiently for many days and months and years 
till the gradually developing mind achieves at 
length the full knowledge that we had aimed at 
Lott; 

The same thing is true of our attempts at 
moral and ‘religious training. Place a_ wise, 


* See Bishop Temple’s Essay, 7he Education of the World. 


ITS TEACHING PROGRESSIVE. 43 


judicious man at the head of a slave mission in 
Central Africa, over poor creatures gathered in 
from slavery and savagedom, and with all their 
evil habits strong upon them, with drunkenness 
and impurity and murder and revenge amongst 
the ordinary incidents of their previous life. He 
will, doubtless, try to reveal to them the love- 
liness of Christianity, which is so apparent to 
himself. But, as in the case of the child referred 
to, though this highest knowledge is before them, 
they cannot yet appreciate or comprehend it. 
Even the noblest minds amongst them can but 
dimly grasp such ideas as the duty of self- 
sacrifice, of loving their enemies, of chivalrous 
reverence for women, of lofty faith and sweet 
adoring love and perfect consecration of the life 
to God. As for the bulk of his converts, if he 
can even impress upon them that murder and 
theft and drunkenness and adultery are sinful, he 
may consider himself for the time very fairly 
successful. 

And if he be a wise man he will not be sur- 
prised or greatly disappointed at this, remember- 


ing the law of gradual development. He will at 


44 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE, 


first tolerate much of which he really disapproves. 
He will overlook much that grieves him. He 
will rejoice at any little sign of effort after good, 
even though it be still largely mixed with evil. 
Lovingly, prayerfully, hopefully he will watch 
over his people in his slow, patient system of 
education. He will be content to move slowly, 
to win his way by almost imperceptible degrees, 
willing even to wait perhaps for many years for 
appreciable progress in the path of right. He 
will give his approval to acts which for these 
poor savages really mean progress upward, 
though to the Christian world at home they 
seem worthier censure than praise. He will 
daily pray for his degraded people that God 
would “cleanse the thoughts of their hearts by 
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” But he will 
believe that the presence of God’s Holy Spirit 
does not necessarily imply the absence of all 
error and wrong-doing, that it necessarily implies 
only the possession of some truth, some life, 
sometimes very little truth and life indeed. And 
thus believing he will patiently wait, teaching, 


praying, hoping still. 


IT SI TEACHING PROGRESSIVE. 45 


By and by, when some of these converts have 
grown into noble, high-minded Christian men, 
trying to follow closely the steps of the Cruci- 
fied, will they not look back on the early training 
and the early notions as on a lower stage that 
they have long since passed, and yet will they 
not confess that this lower stage was a necessary 
part of their progress upward to the full Chris- 
tian life? 


§ 3. 


Now let in the thought of God’s great school 
and His pupil, whose school-days are thousands 
of years. Remember that this pupil, this great 
human race, has had to be taught just like the 
poor blacks in our illustration, slowly, gradually, 
SLepaPyastep,saceit could sbear it 2Remember 
thatethestanitss omthe. Old) Testament, aresthe 
faulds not of the teacher, but of the pupil, the 
necessary result of the pupil’s limitations. 

Then think of the Old Testament as an ac- 
count of this training, or rather of part of it, 


presenting views of the pupil now and then at dif- 


46 HOWE TOCREAD TAL ABIBL fe 


ferent stages of his progress, and see if, regarded 
from this new point of view, things do not begin 
tovsetthe: into their places Le tells. us sot one 
nation chosen out from all the rest, not for its 
own sake, but for the good of the whole ; for un- 
less you think of God as just and impartial and 
caring for all men, you never will understand 
your Bible at all. It tells us how this special 
nation was trained, how the impulses of the poor 
degraded slave race coming out of Egypt were 
checked and guided and chastened and elevated 
by a slow and gradual process; how God watched 
over them as the refiner of silver over the cru- 
cible, slowly and patiently ‘ purging their dross 
and taking away all their tin.” 

It tells of His plan of progressive education 
like that of the ideal teacher in our illustration ; 
how many things in the early stages were over- 
looked or “ winked at,” as the Authorized Ver- 
sion badly puts it;+ how slavery was not at once 
swept away, but its cruelties forbidden and its 
abuses checked ; how divorcing 0 wives was not 


aa 


Acts xxi 40. 


lis teACHING PROGRESSIVE. 47 


absolutely prohibited, but laid under stringent 
regulations so that it could no longer be a mere 
matter of careless whim; how the wild national 
customs of revenge were kept in check by the 
use of the cities of refuge, giving time for the 
moderating of the avenger’s passion. 

It shows how the kindly spirit of gentleness 
and forbearance and care for others’ interest grew 
gradually into their legislation by the inspiring 
of the Holy Ghost. 

It shows that their idea of God was often 
crude and imperfect like that of our own children 
when their teaching has but begun. He was 
great and powerful, greater than ail gods; He 
loved righteousness, He hated iniquity; but He 
was regarded often as only the national Deity of 
Israel, not seeming to care for other nations 
beside. Yet there are glimpses of fuller truth in 
His care for Nineveh, in His dealings with the 
Arabian Job, and especially in His word to this 
the most exclusive race in the world, that in the 
promised seed ‘should all the nations of the 
earth be blessed.” Gradually the horizon 


widened with the prophets. But it was not until 


48 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE, 


after the coming of Christ that the old imperfec- 
tion was finally done away, and Jehovah was 
revealed as the Father of all men, the God who 
‘“willeth all men to be saved.” 

Thus in this law of gradual progress we find 
the key also to others of the difficulties referred 
to. We find actions allowed or mentioned with- 
out blame which we in the purer light of Chris- 
tianity would regard as blameworthy, deeds of 
mingled good and evil, in which perhaps the evil 
has allowances made for it owing to the evil cir- 
cumstances of the time. We find in the Psalms 
the lofty moral teachings and burning aspirations 
after God and holiness now and then marred by 
the fierce prayer for punishment on the wicked. 
They are the prayers of stern faithful servants 
of God claiming that God would vindicate His 
justice. But it was in an age that expected God 
to vindicate it in this life. It was in an age that 
did not clearly distinguish between the sin and 
the sinner, an age when moral indignation and 
hatred of villainy showed itself in invoking ven- 
geance on the villain as the enemy of the God 


who hates all villainy. 


TPO LACHINGSEROUGRESSIVE, 49 


We must remember that we are judging men 
in the lower stages of the patient Divine building 
up of the kingdom of God on earth. We must 
remember, like the missionary teacher in our 
illustration, that the influence of the Holy Spirit 
does not necessarily imply the absence of all 
error and all wrong-doing, that it implies neces- 
sarily only the possession of some truth, some 
life in those on whom it acts. We must recog- 
nise the fact that the coming of Christ made an 
enormous difference to humanity, and that much 
lecsmisutOmpeeexpecred™ ofs the earlier world: 
“The Law was given by Moses, but Grace and 
erutmicame by. |esus Grist. #9; lihere is therefore 
a childhood and youth and manhood of the 
human race. The men of the earlier ages were 
but as children compared with us. They re- 
quired a lower and more elementary teaching, 
less demand upon their self-control, more allow- 
ance to be made for their failures and their sins. 
They were in the lower classes of the great school 
of God. 

Remember how clearly our blessed Lord states 


this difference between the older teaching and 
4 


50 LOWE OUEAI NE Eee BLD LE, 


the new: “Think not that Iam come to destroy 
the;-Law tor the. Prophets Siram. nop icomernto 
destroy, BUT TO FILL UP”’} [that which is defi- 
cient]. And in accordance with this He goes on: 
“Ye have heard that it was said to them of 
old time, Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not 
commit adultery. Thou shalt not forswear thy- 
self.” 2 But 7 give you commandments more ad- 
vanced than these. Again, “ Ye have heard that 
it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth fora 
tooth. But / say unto you that ye resist not 
evil. Ye have heard that it was said, Thou 
shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy. 
But 7 say unto you, Love your enemies and pray 
for them that persecute you.* Moses for the 
hardness of your hearts permitted you to put 
away your wives. But / say unto you that he 
who putteth away his wife except for fornication 
committeth adultery.” And again, when the in- 


a9 


dignant disciples wanted to call down fire, “‘as 
Elijah did,” upon those who had slighted their 
Master, they were plainly taught that even this 


1 Matt. v. 17, Std. veset ores eV 
8 Tbid. v. 38. 4 Ibid. v. 43. 


ti Se ACHING HER OGCKL SST VE. SI 


great prophet of the Old Dispensation was no 
sufficient example for Christians under the New; 
that they belonged to a higher stage in the 


spiritual education of man. 


Let us then read the Bible with this historical” 


view of its meaning and purpose, and many of its 
moral difficulties will inevitably disappear. Let 
us study the Old Testament always in the light 
of Christ’s teaching, and wherever it falls below 
His standard regard it as an earlier and more 
elementary stage in the gradual education of the 
race. The lower lessons of lawgiver and prophet 
must yield to the fuller, higher teaching of their 
Lord. Like a parable comes to us the scene on 
the Mount of Transfiguration, when Peter wished 
Moses and Elias to remain, and the Voice from 
Heaven came out of the cloud, saying, “ This is 


My beloved Son, hear ye zm.” 





PART Ill. 


ON STUDYING WITH THE MIND— 
INTELLIGENTLY. 





ks 


ON TAKING PAINS. 


“YES, I do read my Bible every day. But, to 
be honest with myself, I must confess that my 
reading is more a duty than a pleasure, that the 
daily paper, the newest story, almost any other 
reading is more interesting to me. I heartily 
wish my Bible were a source of interest and plea- 
sure, but for the most part it is not, and some- 
times it seems to me as if it were not quite my 
fault—it seems as if I could not help it. 

Such is a frequent thought with many of us who 
are regular readers of the Bible. Perhaps there 
is something to say in excuse for us. There is 
the disinclination of the natural heart to occupy 


itself much with the things of God, there is some- 
55 


56 HOW ALOCREADTV Hiei BIE. 


times the over-familiarity with the words of Scrip- 
ture, and perhaps the association of them with 
disagreeable task-work in our childhood. But at 
the same time it must be clearly understood that 
the remedy is largely in our own hands, that 
the interest and pleasure of Bible reading can be 
had by all who will give prayer and pains to 
vealed te | 

I shall have to speak later of the necessity of 
prayer, let me here dwell on the need of pains- 
taking study. There seems a tacit assumption in 
many minds that Bible study differs from all 
other study in this—that anybody, learned or 
unlearned, diligent or careless, can without effort 
win its treasures for himself. At any rate no- 
body would think of studying any other impor- 
tant treatise in the same indolent way in which 
men often study the Bible. 

Let me picture the kind of reader that I have 
in mind. He isan earnest, pious Christian who 
regularly reads his daily portion of Scripture. 
But like many people he is rather indolent as to 
mental exertion, or perhaps he has never seri- 


ously thought how his Bible ought to be read. 


ON TAKING PAINS. 57 


He is now at, say, part of the Epistle to the Ga- 
latians. He has been reading St. Paul’s epistles 
straight through as if they were all one treatise, 
as if the first chapter of the Galatian epistle were 
written asa continuation of the last chapter to 
the Corinthians. He has made no attempt to 
get into touch with the writer or the original 
readers, or to think what the words before him 
may have meant to their minds. He begins each 
day at the beginning of his daily chapter. Quite 
possibly, owing to the faulty chapter division, 
this may begin in the middle of an argument, or 
in some way may not be at all the logical com- 
mencement of the subject discussed. So he reads 
over the first few verses, feeling rather hazy as to 
what the apostle is writing about. As he has 
read the previous chapter in the same hazy way, 
he never thinks of looking back to find the con- 
nection. He reads his passage over and over, 
and spends as much time as would have enabled 
him, with a little well-directed mental exertion, 
to get a fair grasp of what the writer had in view. 
Finally, he puts away the book content (or not 
content) with culling out one or two special texts, 


58 LLOYD O READ IE PO BIBLE. 


Certainly that is something gained. But it is all 
that he has gained, whereas he ought and might 
have learned whatever important truth St. Paul 
in this whole passage before him was inspired to 
teach. Then, after years of this so-called study 
we have the weary complaint that the Bible is 
uninteresting, and that he gets little profit from 
it, just as if he were in nowise to blame for this 
himself. 

Every sensible man must know that no book 
worth anything can be studied in this way. The 
fact is that we have to decide each for himself 
whether we think the interest and the profit that 
we desire in our Bible-study is worth paying 
something for in trouble and attention. A man 
can get a slight vague knowledge of his Bible by 
the ordinary indolent methods, but it can never 
be an interesting book to him, and it can never 
be really understood. The Bible requires serious 
attention and diligent systematic study if it is to 
be enjoyed, and if it is to be of much help in the 
making of character for time and ‘for eternity. 
We must each decide whether it is worth this to 
us, but let there be no doubt that it demands 


ON TAKING PAINS. 59 


this. It has rich gold to be mined for, but only 
the stray particles lie scattered on the surface. 
It has the priceless gift of the Water of Life, but 
men must take the trouble of digging if they 
would gain it. God offers His best treasures for 
our acquisition, not for our mere idle, lazy accept- 
ance : not even sincerity and piety will win the 
treasures of His Word without honest labour 
expended on the pursuit.t According to the 
_labour expended (if rightly directed) will be the 
value gained. ‘‘ He that soweth little shall reap 
little, and he that soweth plenteously shall reap 
plenteously.” And it is possible to reap very 
plenteously. It is possible, by earnest attention 
and careful, reverent study, to make the Bible 
not only a most profitable, but a most interesting 
book. 

Let me picture another reader of this epistle to 
the Galatians. He does not read it as if it had 
been written to the Corinthians. He remembers 
that it is another epistle written to different 


people for a different purpose, and under differ- 


1“ They searched the Scriptures daily whether these things 
were so, therefore many of them believed” (Acts xvii. 11). 


exe) HOWATOCREADTHE BIBLE, 


ent circumstances. He feels at once that he 
must try to get in touch with the writer and 
his original readers, that he must try to find the 
main drift and purpose of the epistle, the circum- 
stances which called it forth, and the place in St. 
Paul’s history where it seems best to fit in. He 
looks through the Acts of the Apostles to find 
out what connection St. Paul had with these 
Galatians, and anything else that can be found 
out about them. Then he reads over the whole 
epistle rapidly two or three times for a general 
view of it. He notices at: once its severe, in- 
dignant tone. He notices that the writer is 
vexed and discouraged about something in his 
converts, that he charges them with fickleness 
towards himself and towards his gospel, that he 
speaks of false teachers disturbing and deluding 
them. In the early chapters he seems to find it 
necessary for some reason to assert his position 
and to tell, as if in self-defence, the story of his 
life and his conversion; then two chapters are 
occupied with a discussion on Justification by 
Faith. Perhaps this is all that strikes our reader 


on a first or second rapid perusal of the whole 


ON TAKING LPAINS, em Ot 


epistles |Bute this is) sufficient to rouse his 
interest and curiosity. He has a simple com- 
mentary by him giving the result of many 
thoughtful scholars’ examination of the subject. 
Turning to this for some help and suggestions, 
he finds reason to believe that after St. Paul had 
left Galatia his constant opponents, the emis- 
saries of the Judaizing party, had come pro- 
claiming (as in the case recorded in Acts xv.), 
‘“‘ Except ye be circumcised after the manner of 
Moses ye cannot be saved.’ In thus opposing 
St. Paul’s gospel they had found it necessary to 
deny his authority and apostleship. They de- 
clared him inferior to the other apostles, and 
charged him with inconsistency in his teaching. 
And these fickle converts in Galatia who had 
been so quick to help St. Paul now seemed to 
be equally quick to desert him, so that the 
whole future of Christianity in that region 
seemed to be in jeopardy. With this key our 
reader turns back again to his perusal of the 
epistle. Now he sees easily the drift of it all. 
The first two chapters are St. Paul’s assertion 
of his apostolic authority, and a denial of incon- 


62 HOW ST O READTIAETDIBL fe 


sistency. The next two contain a restatement 
and proof of his gospel of God’s free justifica- 
tion, and an enforcement of a firm stand against 
these mischief-makers, and against all legal and 
ceremonial corruptions of Christianity. After 
this comes his affectionate advice about their 
lives as Christians, closing with another touch 
of that soreness which is evident throughout 
against those men who “ constrain you to be 
circumcised.” 

The whole letter becomes now full of life and 
interest. The reader begins to enter into it with 
pleasure and zest. He begins to sympathise 
with the indignant, sore-hearted Paul. He is 
touched by the little indications of his discour- 
agement and his sensitiveness. He is impressed 
with his affectionate care for these undeserving 
Galatians. Above all, probably his spirit is 
roused in keen sympathy as he enters into the 
warrior spirit of the apostle flinging down his 
defiance in the battle for the truth. For a 
daring letter is this letter to Galatia. What it 
meant to Athanasius, what it meant to Luther, 


to clash against the strongest prejudices of 


ON TAKING PAINS. 63 


Christians of their day, that it must have meant 
to Paul, when the authority of Moses and the 
opinion at Jerusalem and the strong feeling of 
his Galatian converts together confronted him, 
and he had to stand up alone against it all. All 
this must rouse the interest of the reader. Per- 
haps, too, when he has learned that these Ga- 
latae are of the same race as the Celts and the 
Gauls, he may be further interested in tracing 
the similar characteristics springing from their 
common Celtic blood, the warm affections, the 
quick impulsiveness, the proneness to change, 
and it may be, too, the disposition to drunken- 
ness? and to fighting? amongst themselves. 
Now that his interest in the epistle is roused 
he can proceed to learn its teaching in detail, to 
read it more carefully chapter by chapter. He 
will not begin a new chapter without looking 
back to the previous one any more than he 
would begin at the third page of a letter without 
turning back to the second. He will keep al- 
ways in touch with the writer, and with the drift 
of the epistle. He will concentrate his attention 


VGal. v. 21. 2 Ibid. v. 15. 


64 HOWATORELAD WRETBISLE. 


on the meaning intended. He knows that St. 
Paul had a definite meaning in every sentence, 
and he will set himself to find out what that 
meaning was. He will study the marginal refer- 
ences to trace out connections with other epistles 
and_ other books of the Bible, knowing that the 
best commentary on Scripture is Scripture itself. 
If unable to read Greek, he will keep his Revised 
Version always beside him. Whatever its faults 
it will not only give freshness of expression, but 
it will place him as nearly as an English version 
can do ona level with the reader of the original 
tongues. And, as he thus reads, at every step 
new light will break in on him. His study will 
be a pleasure instead of atask. This epistle can 
nevermcre be to him dull and uninteresting, it is 
like a fresh new letter just seen for the first time. 

All this is of course but preliminary to the 
main object of his study, the prayerful search 
after God’s character and God’s will and God’s 
feeling towards men. But it is an important, 
almost an indispensable preliminary. I have 
selected what to many readers is, perhaps, the 


hardest and least interesting of the letters of 


ON TAKING PAINS. 65 


St. Paul; I have not told the half of what may 
be done to make it vivid and interesting. Let no 
reader reply that he has not time for such pains- 
taking study. He ought, if possible, to make 
more time for it. But if he cannot there is no 
need of hurrying. Let him take a month if 
necessary to master this one epistle. One book 
thoroughly studied is worth a dozen books super- 
ficially read; and each book so studied will whet 
the desire and strengthen the habit of studying 
the other books with similar care.? 


1There is much to be said in favour of steady systematic 
reading according to a calendar by which the portion for each 
day is definitely fixed. Yet as a rule one can seldom do very 
thorough study by that way a/one. Perhaps for some readers 
it would be well to combine it with the method here recom- 
mended,—to read, say, in the morning according to a calendar, 
and at night to aim at the slower and more thorough study of 
certain special books as suggested above. 


. 


II. 
ON “ PUTTING YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.” 


WuHuy does a mother read with flushed and tear- 
ful face the tale of a woman’s self-sacrifice for 
her child? Why is there such intense interest 
for a schoolboy in a graphic story of adventure? 
Because unconsciously, without effort, the imagi- 
nation is going forth, living in the scene, experi- 
encing every feeling of the actors, obeying that 
law which is the great secret of pleasurable read- 
ing—PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. Now if one 
take pains to acquire the habit it is always pos- 
sible to do this in some degree at least; not 
always indeed unconsciously and without effort— 
sometimes it requires a good deal of effort, espe- 
cially in books so familiar to us as are those of 


the Bible. But it is worth all the effort it costs. 
66 


ONS FOTLING VOURSELEIN AlS PLACE. 67 


The amount of interest in reading any part will 
depend greatly on our success in thinking our- 
selves into the place of the persons concerned, 
not merely in picturing the outward scene, but 
also, in so far as may be, entering into the minds 
of the speakers and actors. True, a greater ima- 
ginative power will give one man an advantage 
over another, but all that is really needful for 
success is some little knowledge of the circum- 
stances and surroundings, and the effort to think 
oneself thoroughly into them. 

Of course this is easier in some parts than in 
others. It is easy, for instance, in reading about 
Elijah, to put yourself in his place in his indig- 
nant wrath against Ahab at Naboth’s field, or in 
his mocking exultation over the prophets of 
Baal. It is easy to feel the pathos of Moses’ 
farewell, to put yourself in the place of Deborah 
in the joy of her triumph, or of the big, mis- 
chievous giant with the gates of Gaza on_ his 
back, laughing at the surprise of the outwitted 
Philistines. The historical books of the Old and 
New Testament are full of such scenes, and any 


man who will exercise his imaginative faculty 


68 TLOWSTOGREADA HEALD Le: 


has material for the most vivid pictures. But 
what I desire to emphasise is, that not only 
here, but all through the Bible it is possible to 
add a keen interest to your reading by this 
effort to “‘ put yourself ine hisiplace: 99) Lhink, 
for instance, in the early prophecies of Isaiah of 
a vacillating king and an evil-living people, of the 
rumours in the city of approaching invasion, and 
the solemn sight of the prophet in his haircloth 
robe proclaiming the Divine message that burned 
within him. In the Gospels try to enter into the 
feelings of the formalist Pharisees and the 
jealous scribes and the ignorant people from the 
slums of Jerusalem, and above all of the great 
loving, sympathising heart of Him who under- 
stood them all. Try as you read the epistles of 
St. Paul to put yourself in the place of the 
writer, with his sensitive, highly-strung nature, 
now glad, now despondent, now vexed and dis- 
satisfied at the conduct of some church, but 
always with every thought full of loving loyalty 
to his Master. 

Get into the habit of thus exercising your 


imagination, making use of an easy popular com- 


ON * PUTTING YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.” 69 


mentary for the necessary information to enable 
you to do so, and you will soon find your Bible 
gaining largely in vividness and meaning and 
interest. 

And do not think that the gain is merely in 
the vividness and literary interest of the books, 
though even that would be of great importance. 
The more you enter into the circumstances of 
the story, and into the feelings and thoughts of 
the writers or actors, the nearer you will have 
come to the spiritual meaning which God designs 
you to learn. 

In this connection it may be well to remind 
the reader that as far as he can he should try 
to read each book in its proper setting. The 
books of the Bible, like any other books, are of 
course best read in the light of contemporary 
writings. Psalm or Prophecy or Epistle will gain 
not only in vividness and interest, but also in 
clearness, if there be called up beside it the 
living person of the writer or speaker, and, as far 
as may be, the scenes and circumstances in 
which he moved ; and the vividness and clearness 


thus gained will be reflected back upon those 


70 HOW MOCREAD SHE CBIBLE, 


scenes and circumstances, so that they too shall 
be the richer thereby. 

Thus, for example, we are told that Isaiah’s 
prophecies were uttered “in the days of Uzziah, 
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah” 
(Isa. i. 1). It is evident that we shall best under- 
stand and get into sympathy with Isaiah by first 
reading the story of those kings, and trying to 
think ourselves into the position of the prophet 
when he was uttering these discourses. So, too, 
with Hosea, Micah, Joel, and Amos, who all 
belong to the story of the kings. If you would 
think yourself into the position of Zephaniah, 
Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, place them in their proper 
setting just before the history of the Captivity. 
As you read the pathetic story of the Return of 
the Exiles in Ezra and Nehemiah, and find that 
two prophets named Haggai and Zechariah were 
helping to encourage and stir up the people, turn 
to that part of your Bible where those men’s 
utterances are recorded, and you will find new 
interest aroused both in their prophecies and in 
the story. 


So._in the New Testament also, the Four 


ONG EO ING OtUn sii ile dNililoel LA Chy 7 t 


Gospels make one group to be read together— 
St. Paul’s Epistles should be read in connection 
with his biography in the Acts of the Apostles— 
St. John’s Gospel with his Epistles—St. Peter’s 
Epistles with the chapters in the Gospels and the 
Acts telling something of his life and his preach- 
ing. A little thought thus exercised in arrang- 
ing a course of study will add very considerably 
to the pleasure and profit of our Bible reading. 


Tats 
ON USING OUR COMMON SENSE. 


“GRANT us by the same Spirit to have a right 
judgment in all things.”” So runs the Whitsun- 
tide prayer for the gifts of the Holy Ghost, ask- 
ing, surely, amongst other things, for that gift, 
not too common, alas! in the ‘“ religious world ”’ 
of to-day, the gift of Common Sense. Is there 
any department of life where people so easily 
lay aside their Common Sense as in matters con- 
nected with the Bible and with religion? Even 
people of superior mental ability, clever students, 
keen men of business, people whose advice in the 
practical affairs of life would be most sagacious 
and valuable, are frequently found believing and 
acting in religious matters as if they had been 
but very sparingly endowed with practical wis- 


dom. It would almost seem as if they thought 
72 


ON USING OUR COMMON SENSE. 73 


it irreverent to judge by the rules of Common 
Sense the meaning of the inspired writers or the 
systems of theology, however foolish, which men 
have evolved from them. There seems a vague 
notion in some minds that this Common Sense is 
rather a carnal and secular endowment, a very 
useful faculty in the guidance of every-day life, 
but not at all intended to meddle in the sacred 
province of religion; in fact, that a capacity for 
the unquestioning reception of any kind of 
religious teaching has in it more of the nature of 
faith and of that ‘“ simplicity of a little child” so 
pleasing to God. Indeed, when rejecting certain 
interpretations of Scripture on the grounds 
of Common Sense, we are often met with the 
grave rebuke that such objections are of the 
carnal man and of the presumption of human 
reason. 

And so it has come to this, that the Com- 
mon Sense which God has given men to enable 
them to think rightly and see clearly in all 
other departments of life, by means of which 
the merchant succeeds in his business, and 


the philosopher is kept from absurd theories, 


74 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE. 


and the whole world is enabled to guide its 
steps in the countless details of daily life—that 
in religion alone, the most important province 
Y of alle thissfacultyaisito sDesskentustie, back- 
eround. 

Yet a very little consideration will show how 
vitally important it is in Bible reading to exercise 
our Common Sense. For the Bible is no formal 
system of teaching with every precept accurately 
defined and limited, and every exception care- 
fully pointed out. It deals rather with broad 
principles than with particular precepts. We are 
trusted to apply those principles ourselves to the 
practical conduct of our lives. We find definite 
commands given to men in the Bible. Some- 
times they are of universal application. Some- 
times to take them literally would but lead to 
mistakes. Sometimes they are but the applying 
of broad principles to a particular case, which 
may or may not be similar to our own. Some- 
times they are figurative, and intended to pre- 
scribe the spirit and temper of our lives rather 
than any particular action, as, for example, 


“Give to him that asketh thee,” “If any man 


ON USING OUR COMMON SENSE. 75 


shall sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, 
let him have thy cloke also.” Sometimes, again, 
they are general rules, subject to certain excep- 
tions which the writer trusts our Common Sense 
to make. For instance, when children are told, 


, 


“Obey your parents in af things,” Common 
Sense reads ‘‘except your parents command 
what is wrong”; when -we are told, “ Submit 
yourselves to every ordinance of man,’ Common 
Sense says, “except when it contravenes the 
ordinance of God,” as in the case of the apostles 
themselves, who promptly disobeyed the ordi- 
nance of their rulers forbidding them to preach 
Christ. 

The same thing is true of the Types and Pro- 
phecies of Scripture. There are many events in 
its history that are typical of Christ, there are 
many prophecies whose fulfilment is a confirma- 
tion of our faith. But judgment and Common 
Sense are necessary in reading them, else the 
Bible will be belittled by the foolishness of men. 
Samson has been presented to us as a type of 
our Lord, and the scarlet thread of Rahab has 
been made to foreshadow the Blood of the 


76 CLOUT O PLAT BULLE LOLS 


Atonement.! Elaborate proofs have been pub- 
lished that by the number 666 in the Apocalypse 
St. John must have indicated Napoleon, or Mr. 
Gladstone, or the Pope. Every important poli- 
tical crisis of the past century has been proved 
by some enthusiast to have been foretold by the 
prophet Daniel. Surely by a little Common 
Sense such things might have been avoided. 
Again, it is the prominent teaching of all 
Scripture to any man who brings his Common 
Sense to its study, that nothing is more impor- 


tant in religion than the humble honest struggle 


1 One could fill hundreds of pages with illustrations of this 
tendency in all ages of the Church. The five rivers of Eden 
denoted the five senses. The planting of the garden in Eden 
meant the planting of virtue in humanity. “I laid me down 
and slept and rose again’’ (Psa. iii. 5) was, according to St. 
Augustine, a prophecy of the death and resurrection of Christ. 
The “ two swords’’ meant the spiritual and temporal power of 
the Church. Even as early as the second century we have in 
the Epistle of Barnabas a fine example of this method in his 
explanation of Abraham’s. circumcising his 318 servants. Tie 
points out that the number 318 can be denoted by the Greek 
numeral letters TIH. The ]H, he says, stands for [Hoovc=JEsus. 
But what of the T? The T from its shape indicates the Cross. 
The whole is a symbolic prophecy of the Crucifixion! It is 
amusing to see the writer’s satisfaction at this discovery. “No 
one,” he says, “has been admitted by me to a more excellent 
piece of knowledge than this. But I know that ye are worthy.” 


ON USING OUR COMMON SENSE. 77 


in the path of right, the determination, regard- 
less of all consequences, to “do justly and love 
mercy, and walk humbly with our God.” Yet 
in their eagerness to emphasise the freeness of 
God’s grace some people seem willing to hold 
their Common Sense in abeyance. In spite of 
the acknowledged trend of the whole teaching of 
Scripture, in spite of the demand of Common 
Sense that Right-doing must be the highest 
Right, they see nothing strange in interpreting 
certain passages so as to make the struggle after 
righteousness almost unimportant. And so we 
find the popular religious notions drawn from 
the Bible that to be faithful in our duty is some- 
how of less importance than to be exact in our 
“views.” Nay, we find scores of good people 
who have learned out of the Bible that under 
certain conditions the earnest effort to do our 
duty may even be a dangerous matter, may risk 
our losing all share in the Atonement of Christ. 
Men whose own lives show a constant and beau- 
tiful effort after the will of God are frequently 
heard perplexing the anxious strugegler after 


_ right by telling him that “trying is the road to 


78 HOW ALO READ WAAL DIDLE: 


hell, and trusting only is the road to Heaven.” 


And who does not know the old revival hymn ?— 


“ Doing is a deadly thing, 

Doing ends in death ; 
Cast your deadly doing down, 

Down at Jesu’s feet.” 


No doubt those who teach such things have 
got hold of a side of truth that needs to be 
taught. The Bible is full of statements of the 
blessedness and strength that comes from trust- 
ing in Christ. It is continually comforting the 
poor frightened penitent with the thought that 
God is the Father longing for His child’s return, 
that we do not need to pile up good works be- 
fore coming for His forgiveness who is more 
anxious to receive us than we are to be received. 
It is most blessed, helpful teaching, but it is 
possible for foolish, well-meaning people to strain 
it to an absurdity that would overthrow the 
foundations of morality altogether. If men be 
sufficiently indolent and thoughtless, or suff- 
ciently destitute of Common Sense, it is possible 
for them to found almost any absurdity’ on state- 


ments of the Bible. |The inspired writers ex- 


ON USING OUR COMMON SENSE. 79 


press themselves quite freely, and usually with- 
out showing any anxiety to secure themselves 
from being misunderstood. They seem to as- 
sume that their readers will be sensible people. 
They see no need of constantly guarding and 
qualifying their statements, or reminding us that 
they are to be taken in connection with other 
statements made elsewhere. It is instructive to 
notice how almost reckless they are in this 
respect—if one may use such a word of men 
endowed with inspiration—so greatly do they 
seem to trust to the Common Sense of their 
readers. Surely they are not to blame for mis- 
takes about the Bible if men will not use the 
faculties that God has given them. 

It would be tedious to describe in detail the 
many other ways in which the absence of Com- 
mon Sense shows itself in Bible reading. There 
is the thoughtless habit of quoting all parts of 
the Bible equally as “ Scripture” whether they 
be the words of Our Lord and His apostles or 
the words of Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the 
Naamathite, who are afterwards represented as 
condemned and contradicted by God. There is 


80 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE. 


the habit, too, in which preachers often set the 
bad example, of twisting the obvious meaning of 
words until the plain man fancies that the words 
of the Bible may be made to mean anything. 
And—perhaps one of the worst and commonest 
ways of all—there is the error dealt with in a 
later section, the use, for the support of. doc- 
trines, of isolated texts utterly regardless of the 
context or of the circumstances under which | 
they were originally uttered. 

Reader, in studying your Bible use your Com- 
mon Sense. Believe that there is nothing im- 
pious or disrespectful in using it.. Believe that 
there was Common Sense in the minds of the 
inspired writers, and that they had a Common 
Sense meaning for the words that they wrote. 
If Scripture is explained in a way that clashes 
with Common Sense, do not be one bit afraid to 
question such interpretation. Only be on your 
guard against irreverence and presumption. Be 
modest, be humble, be reverent. Do not imagine 
your individual Common Sense to be the mea- 
sure of all things. But be quite sure that the 


God who demands the use of this faculty in your 


ON USING OUR COMMON SENSE. 81 


ordinary life demands it just as well in your 
study of the Bible. 

And do not be troubled at the responsibility 
that is laid on you of using your faculties in 
interpreting Scripture. That responsibility is 
laid on you by God. You must make up your 
mind that the necessity of using your Common 
Sense about the Bible is not a matter of accident 
but of God’s design. In the lower stage of the 
education of men in the Old Testament they 
were still kept in some degree in leading strings. 
Definite: laws were given and minute rules of 
conduct for special cases were prescribed. But 
in the New Testament it seems as if God were 
saying, ‘The childhood of the race is over, you 
must learn to walk alone.’ Instead of definite 
rules and creeds and cases of Conscience we have 
broad principles which we ourselves must apply 
—occasional sayings, sometimes seeming almost 
contradictory to each other, scattered here and 
there through different books. Is it not because 
in this New Dispensation the fuller Pentecostal 
power is available for the illumining of the Mind 


and Conscience? Is it not because God wants 
6 


82 LOW SEO TL IIRL Pel 


us to exercise our Intellectual and Spiritual 
faculties more earnestly about eternal things, 
and that He expects that we shall all, to use 
the words of the apostle, “in understanding be 
Mena 

When you pray for the help of the Holy Spirit 
to enable you to understand His Word, always 
remember that that help is given not only in the 
deepening of your affections and the quickening 
of your Conscience, but also in the clearing and 
illumining your mind. Therefore let it be one 
of your prayers as you open your Bible, ‘ Grant 
us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement 
in all things, and evermore to rejoice in His holy 


comfort.” 


IV. 


ON USING OUR MORAL SENSE. 


THIS must be a fundamental axiom in all inter- 
Pretauonsolmeoctipture: 5 onal not, thee |udge 
Dialetnewentthe domiontwe (Or. to put the: state: 
ment into other words, Every Christian man who 
prays to have his Conscience enlightened by the 
Holy Ghost is bound to use that Conscience in 
interpreting the Bible. 

Conscience is to the soul what sight or taste 
is to the body. It is the Moral Sense, the organ 
of the Holy Spirit, the organ of perception of 
spiritual things. When we pray for a further 
enlightening by the Holy Spirit we are chiefly 
praying that Conscience should be brought into 
closer sympathy with God, that it should see 


more clearly God’s standard of right, that it 
83 


84 HOW FO READ a ii ital hie 


should recoil more sensitively from everything 
wrong. ‘And, as the eye cannot help distinguish- 
ing the colours of flowers, as the tongue cannot 
help distinguishing bitter from sweet, so Con- 
science, illumined by the power of the Holy 
Ghost, cannot help being keenly sensitive to the 
quality of actions or commands. This keen 
sensitiveness is the gift of God, and it is wrong 
to ignore it when interpreting God's Bible. 
Therefore, if men draw from that Bible doctrines 
from which Conscience recoils, that recoils a 
strong indication that these men are in some way 
wrong. Jt would of course not be safe to judge 
Jrom the recowl of this or that man’s individual 
Conscience, lest there may be in them anything 
abnormal, just as it would not. be safe to decide 
positively about a colour or taste on the evidence 
of the eyes or tongue of one or another indi- 
vidual, lest there might be colour blindness or 
insensibility of tongue. But it is quite safe to 
assert that if any interpretation of Scripture 
clashes with the universal Christian Conscience, 
z.¢., With the best men’s highest sense of what is 


right and true, then the honest student of Scrip- 


ONGUSING OCUR*MORAL SENSE. 85 


ture is bound by his faith in God to question 
boldly the truth of such interpretation. 

It is sad that it should be necessary to say this 
in a Christian land in this Nineteenth Century ; 
but we cannot blind our eyes to the fact that it 
zs necessary, and that much injury has been done 
to religion by the neglect of thus exercising faith 
in God, and of using the Conscience that God 
has given us, when interpreting the meaning of 
His Word. It has been often said that we must 
not venture to judge from our notions of right 
and wrong—-that, even if we are told that a cer- 
tain passage in Scripture means something which 
clashes with men’s highest sense of what is 
generous and fair, yet “ our shrinking, our moral 
repulsion of the doctrine must not weigh one jot 
—true faith will accept it without hesitation.” 

True faith, believe me, will do nothing of the 
kind. It is a most pernicious thing, subversive 
of all true religion, to speak thus of faith. True 
faith means faith in a Person, faith in a Char- 
acter, faith in an infinite Justice, and Love, and 
Nobleness, and Generosity—faith in a God to 
whom it would be absolutely impossible that He 


86 HOW LO KEADVITIE BLD. 


“should do any thing unfair, or ungenerous, or 
unkind. This is the faith which you must pray 
for in your Bible reading—a faith that is taught 
you by the Bible itself—a faith that will keep 
you loyal to your Heavenly Father, jealous for 
His character, refusing to believe anything un- 
worthy of Him. 

Of course, it will be understood that here there 
is no question of doubting or believing the Bible, 
but only of doubting or believing san’s interpre- 
tatton of the. Bible: ~The comparison, an’ the 
writer's mind, is that of a schoolboy reading 
in a letter from his father some passage which 
he cannot understand. A companion suggests 
an unworthy meaning which the words might 
bear, but the boy only smiles at such an inter- 
pretation ; instinctively without hesitation he re- 
jects it as untrue to his father’s lofty character. 
If he can find no other meaning he prefers leav- 
ing the passage a mystery for the present. Who 
will deny that this is the highest faith, the truest 
loyalty to his absent father ? 

Let no one object that this is ‘a presump- 
tuous setting up of the puny human Conscience 


ON USING OUR MORAL SENSE. 87 


to judge of the morality of the Word of God.” 
To say this would show a misapprehension of 
the whole position. For is not the author of 
any book the best interpreter of that book? Is 
not the Holy Spirit the best interpreter of the 
Bible which He has inspired? Is not the Con- 
science, the organ of the Holy Spirit, the faculty 
by means of which He guides men towards the 
right? Is it presumptuous to use the human 
eye to recognise beauty or ugliness in Nature? 
Is it presumptuous to use the human ear to 
discern a jarring note in beautiful music? Are 
they not God’s appointed organs for so doing ? 
Why, then, should it seem presumptuous that 
earnest, reverent-minded Christian men who pray 
for the illumining and sensitising of Conscience 
by the Holy Ghost should use its indications of 
approval or recoil in judging how they ought 
to understand their Bible? Is it not God’s 
appointed method for helping them to under- 
stand it? . 

Neither let any one object that this is to 
set up our poor human reason as a criterion of 
God’s wisdom. It is nothing of the kind, If I 


88 HOW TO READ THEVBIBEL. 


have a complete faith in the character of some 
one far wiser and better than myself, I shall be 
quite ready to believe that his action is right, 
even though the small part of the circumstances 
known to me are not sufficient to qustilyait a elt 
Iam told that certain things are done by God 
which puzzle me, because I do not know all the 
circumstances of the case as they appear to 
Him, but which would seem to me good in the 
highest degree if I did know all the circum- 
stances—I can easily believe it. But if I am 
told that a certain passage in the Bible teaches 
us that God acts in a way which every honest 
mind must feel to be ungenerous and unfair, and 
which no conceivable further knowledge of the 
circumstances would show to be other than 
ungenerous and unfair, then I must refuse—I 
am bound by my loyalty to Him to refuse my 
belief to such an interpretation. If no other 
interpretation seems warranted by the words, 
I must leave it an unsolved difficulty for the 
present. 

For example, if I read in Exodus that God 
told the Israelites to borrow of their neighbours 


ON USING OUR MORAL SENSE. 89 


“jewels of silver and jewels of gold” to spoil 
the Egyptians, and if I do not understand the 
solution of the difficulty,! I am, of course, bound — 
to leave it unsolved rather than believe that its 
meaning is that God commanded an immoral 
action. 

I read that “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart ” 
and afterwards that He punished Pharaoh for 
this hardness of his heart. I read also that 
Pharaoh hardened his own heart. I may not 
understand what this hardening of Pharaoh’s 
heart meant; but if anybody interprets it that 
God punished Pharaoh for what Pharaoh could 
not have helped, I must at once. reject that 
meaning. | 

If I read in the ninth of Romans St. Paul’s 
famous passage about God’s election, and if 
any man should explain it to mean that God 
destines some men to eternal salvation and 
some to eternal hell, not for anything of good or 
ill that they have done, but for His own glory 
—to magnify Himself—I am bound, if I have 


1Tt may be worth noting that in the Revised Version, Exod. 
xi. 2, the word is translated “ask,” not “ borrow,” 


go AOWALOUREAD I RE BI al An 


any real faith in God, to reject such a meaning 
without hesitation. It is mainly the Bible itself 
that -has thus educated my ‘Conscience and 
encouraged me to have this real faith in God. 
And a little further searching of that Bible 
justifies such fearless faith in this especial case 
by teaching me through another letter of this 
same writer that God “ willeth that all men 
should be saved.” 4 And so, though unable to 
reconcile, the’ sparadox lecanmrestwnikesamiitile 
child with heart at peace because I have refused 
to believe evil of God. I can patiently await 
thé solutionof thesmystery ss boatet Dercmisman 


b 


‘election’ must be true, since it is stated in 
the Bible. I may never in this world under- 
stand fully what it means, but I am bound by 
my faith in God‘to believe that if ever I do 
understand’ it, | shall*see it to) be justiand fain 
and generous to all, perfectly consistent with 
the good Heart of Him who “so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son” 
toasavesic. 

It is necessary to write plainly about this 


Et Time Rue 


ON USING OUR MORAL SENSE. gI 


matter even at the risk of being misunderstood. 
Tice ome chucemste verence, indy sittis: a foolish 
superstition which would suppress the spiritual 
voice of Conscience and accept human inter- 
pretations of Scripture that are dishonouring 
Om OU mee bmiasmiiagde esac esmany heartse that 
God has not made sad, and shaken the belief 
of thousands in the truth of revelation. 

But in opposing false reverence it is all the 
more necessary anxiously to cultivate the true. 
Let there be no forgetting that we are but as 
children on the shores of the great ocean of 
truth. One thing we know with certainty, that 
God must be good. Let us hold loyally to that 
knowledge at all costs. Let not our knowledge 
be disturbed by our ignorance. But let not that 
knowledge lead us to shallow conceit and _pre- 
sumption. Young people and impulsive people 
on first realising that the utterance of Conscience 
in such matters has Divine authority are inclined 
to score out at once as mistakes and misappre- 
hensions all the moral difficulties which confront 
them in the Bible. Some of us who have grown 


older and less impulsive have learned to be more 


92 HOWL OSREA DAH Papin. 


careful, finding that these difficulties may have 
often important teaching when men have become 
wise enough to understand it aright. For 
example, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, 
though a great difficulty to the superficial reader, 
is to the more patient and careful thinker a deep 
and solemn truth about God’s laws of life and 
conduct. . Therefore -let, us -be humble~ and 
reverent and patient in dealing with moral diff- 
culties. If we cannot see our way through them, 
let us be content to leave them aside as unsolved 
for the present. They are but a few dark spots 
that may wait for illumination. Amid the glory 
and beauty of the teaching around them they 
need “shake “no man’s taith iin sG@odvor inthe 


inspiration of Scripture. 


AWS 
ONVSTUDYVING) BYarrleEXTSs: 


VReekUGKIN i sbisus Péhicss of the: Dust, 
cleverly hits off the method in which large num- 
bers of good Christian people acquire their 
knowledge of the Bible. The way they read 
their Bibles, he says, is ‘‘just like the way the 
old monks thought that hedgehogs ate grapes. 
They rolled themselves (it was said) over and 
over where the grapes lay on the ground. What 
fruit stuck to their spines they carried off and 
ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll them- 
selves over and over their Bibles,” and whatever 
texts first stick to their spines they carry off and 
feed on. But, he adds, “you can only get the 
skins of the texts that way; if you want their 
juice you must press them in cluster.” 


This is a very necessary warning to readers of 
93 


94 HOWSL OSREADSIA TE BIpia, 


the Bible. Of course there is much advantage 
to be got from storing up the mind with texts, 
and it is an enormous gain to Christendom that 
the teaching of the Bible is capable of being so 
used. Many a man who could never remem- 
ber a long passage or a difficult discussion is 
strengthened daily in his struggle towards the 
right by the little text which he has carried off 
to feed on from his morning Bible reading. 
There is no reason why he should discontinue so 
edifying a practice. Nay, rather every reason to 
the contrary. “ But he may need to be guarded 
against the very mischievous abuse of it in the 
habit of isolating a few words from their context 
and degrading them to the level of a fetish, not 
considering at all the special conditions which 
may limit their meaning or application. 

It is obvious that the meaning of any passage 
may be very much modified by its immediate 
context, or by the main drift or purpose of the 
writing in which it occurs. It is possible so to 
present extracts out of any man’s writings, that 
the writer would never recognise the statements 


as his own. And this is, of course, as true of the 


OMSL VINGIBY: 11X55. 95 


Scriptures as of any other writings. Any one 
who has ever had to argue with this ‘“ hedge- 
hoggy”’\€lass of Bible readers will remember 
many a text wrested from its connection and 
made to mean whatever the speaker desired. 
Most of the false theology and false ethics that 
prevail amongst Christians are due to this fertile 
source of error. ~Passages have been first sepa- 
rated from their context, the spirit of the whole 
evaporating in the process, and then a meaning 
has been read into them by the ardent advocate 
of some religious tenet quite foreign to the true 
meaning which they are seen to possess when 
considered in their proper context. Good men 
separating from the visible Church because its 
members are not perfect tell us of God’s com- 
mand: ‘Come ye out from among them, and 
touch not the unclean thing,’ + quite oblivious of 
the fact that this was written to a notoriously 
faulty Church as a warning to keep separate 
from heathenism and its vices. Preachers who 
are too lazy to work at their sermons some. 


times quote to themselves with pious unction, 


12 Cor. yi. 173 


96 HOW TO READ A ALABILIE 


Stshall -beseiven: younmne that same- hour 
what ye shall speak ’’4—words spoken to com- 
fort poor persecuted disciples when their enemies 
should haul them up before governors and kings. 
The absolute fixedness of the soul’s condition 
at death is proved from the latter half of a text 
in Ecclesiastes: ‘Where the tree ‘falleth, there 
itshallyibe, 4 sthoupheiteise.cyiderestromethe 
context and from the whole scope of the book 
that no such meaning is likely to have been 
intended by the writer. Emotional Christians of 
very questionable lives sometimes quote with 
great satisfaction to themselves, “‘ The blood of 
Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin,” leaving 
out altogether the important qualification, “If 
we walk in the light as He is in the light,” ? and 
the fact that the apostle is referring to Sancti- 
fication. A man can prove anything if he 
chooses to juggle in this way with the Bible. 
He can prove universal condemnation from the 
words, “ Ye shall die in your sins,” if he omit 
the preceding» “(Except =yé"sbeheve: a Tie “ean 
prove Atheism from the text, “There is no 


1 Matt. x. 19. 2 Eccles. xi. 3. 8 1 Johni. 7. 


ONES LOL VAN GIR YPN TS 97 


God,’? if he only leave out the accompanying 
words. He can make a pet system of theology 
for himself by making a mosaic of the texts 
which attract him and ignoring those that do not 
fit in with his scheme. He can take to pieces 
the noble mosaic of a king and form it again 
into the mosaic of a dog.? 

We are dealing here with no imaginary evil. 
There are many good Christian people whose 
study of the Bible is mainly of this kind. They 
have no broad, intelligent grasp of the meaning 
of Scripture. They rarely take the trouble of 
following out an argument, or understanding 
the main drift of a long passage or a book of 
the Bible. They know a great many beautiful 
texts, but it is a very distorted, one-sided know- 
ledge from their practice of dwelling on those 
texts which attract them, and ignoring those 
which do not fit in with their theological views. 
And all this not only spoils the interest and 
profit of their Bible reading, but tends to bring 


1 Psa. lili. 1. 
2 The simile is from Irenzeus in the second century (//aer. 
I. 8. § 4). Even then this evil habit needed rebuke. 


7 


98 HOW TO. READ THE BIBLE. 


discredit on the Bible itself. Why do we find 
such divergences of opinion gathered out of 
the same Bible? Why do we so often hear 
the flippant sneer that any one can prove what 


he pleases from Holy Scripture ? 


“ In religion 
What error is there but some sober brow 
Will bless it and approve it with a text?” 


Why? Just because of this vicious method of 
gathering separate detached little statements and 
looking upon them as standards of truth, because 
instead of pressing the grapes in the cluster, men 
will pick them out separately as fancy dictates. 
The more thoughtful reader of his Bible will 
be on his guard against this error. He will not 
be content with merely finding nice “texts” in 
his daily Bible reading. He will try to grasp the 
sense of the passage before him asa whole. If 
the sense seem incomplete he will look back to 
the preceding passage. When a certain text is 
presented to him as a proof of some doctrine, he 
will by no means accept it at once as conclusive. 
He will examine the context in which it occurs 


id 


ON STUDYING BY « TEXTS.” 99 


and try to see if the writer had such doctrine in 
HissMindee ieee beaartext.itom the Old TVesta- 
ment, he will remember the progressive nature of 
Revelation and examine if it be in accord with 
the fuller teaching of Christ. In a word, he will 
try to take account of the whole tenor of Scrip- 
ture, and not gather its meaning from separate 


fo ede eo 


VI. 
ON ONE-SIDED TRUTHS. 


IN connection with this subject of studying by 
texts will best come in the following question 
which has sometimes been a puzzle to simple 
readers of the Bible. What are we to do with 
statements in Scripture that conflict or seem to 
conflict with each other? 


A 
ple Ee Be 

EPH. ii. 8, 9.—‘‘ By grace are 
ye saved through faith. . . not 
of works, lest any man should 
boast.” 

Rom. iii. 28.—“ Therefore we 
conclude that a manis justified 
by faith without the deeds of 
the law.” 


LUKE xiii. 24.—“ Strive to 
enter in at the strait gate.” 

REV. xxii. 18.—“ Whcsoever 
will, let him take of the water 
of life freely.” 


ao Nee ee 


As for example :— 
B 


da 

JAS. ii. 14.—“ What doth it 
profit, my brethren, though a 
man say he have faith, and have 
not works? Can faith save 
him ?” 

JAS. ii. 24.--“ Ye see then how 
that by works a man is justified 
and not by faith only.” 








Rom. ix. 16.—“ It is not of 
him that willeth nor of him 
that runneth, but of God that 
sheweth mercy.” 

JOHN iv. 44.—“ No man can 
come unto Me except the 
Father which hath sent Me 
draw him.” 


I0o0 


ON ONE-SIDED TRUTHS. IOI 


PsA. clxv. 9.—* The Lord is 
loving unto every man.” 


PROV. xxvi. 4.— Answer 
not a fool according to his 
folly, lest thou also be like 
unto him.” 


MATT. xii. 30.—* He that is 
not with Me is against Me.” 


JOHN xiv. 27.—“Peace I leave 
with you, My peace I give unto 
you.” 


MATT. xv. 24.—“ I am not 
sent but unto the lost sheep of 
the house of Israel.” 


PsA. vii. 11.—“ God is angry 
with the wicked every day.” 


PROV. xxvi. 5.—“ Answer a 
fool according to his folly, lest 
he be wise in his own con- 
ceit.y 


MARK ix. 40.—“ He that is 
not against us is on our part.” 


MATT. x. 34.—“ Think not 
that I am come to send peace 
on earth: I came not to send 
peace, but a sword.” 


JOHN iii. 16.—* God so loved 
the world, that He gave His 
only begotten Son, that whoso- 
ever believeth in Him should 
not perish, but have everlasting 
life.” 


How are we to understand these opposing state- 


ments? 


If one of them contains the truth does 


it not seem as if the other were opposed to the 


truth ? 


We must learn that neither of the two as 


opposed to the other contains the full truth. 
Each by itself is but a side of truth, and both 


102 HOHGLO READ ELH ES BIDE: 


the opposing sides are necessary, limiting and 
qualifying each other, to make the truth com- 
plete. The neglect of this fact has been a fruit- 
ful source of error since the Christian Church 
began. One party arose and took one side of a 
truth to be the whole, exaggerating it to the 
complete neglect of the opposite side; and then 
another party, perceiving the falsehood of this 
exaggeration, was tempted to assert the ne- 
elected side with equally undue prominence. 
And so what should have been a perfect truth 
became two opposing errors. Thus one party 
took-one side of the truth about Grace and Free- 
will, another took the other side, and of course 
both went wrong. One set of Christians took 
exclusively the texts I have marked (A), and 
another the texts marked (B) with regard to 
Faith and Works, and in the same way both 
went wrong. Many like instances might be 
given. Wherever there are two sides of a truth, 
and men take one and neglect the other, it must 
always lead to error. It is only by combining 
the separate fragments of truth that we shall 


arrive at a conception of the truth itself. “The 


ON ONE-SIDED TRUTHS, 103 


friends of Truth,’ to use Milton’s exquisite 
Siiiles imitating ithe careful’ search that Isis 
made for the mangled body of Osiris, go up and 
down still gathering up limb by limb as they can 
find them. We have not yet found them all nor 
ever shall do till her Master’s second coming ; 
He shall bring together every joint and member 
and shall mould them into an immortal feature 
of loveliness and perfection.” 

Were it not for the mechanical notions in 
vogue about Inspiration there would be no diff- 
culty in seeing why truths in the Bible should 
often be stated in this seemingly conflicting way. 
It is the natural way in which we expect men 
ordinarily to state such truths now. We are 
quite accustomed to hear different teachers or the 
same teacher on different occasions emphasise 
now one, now another side of a truth, according 
as circumstances made it necessary. Take, for 
example, the two sides of the truth about Faith 
and Works as expressed in the apparently oppos- 
ing texts which I have quoted. If a man were 
dealing with earnest penitents making them- 


1 Areopagitica, p. 89. Bohn’s Edition. 


104 VIOVUZA TOVREA DATTA EeBI DLL: 


selves miserable in their struggles to win God's 
favour by piling up good actions to their account 
and always fearing that at last God would reject 
them if they had not done enough to appease 
Him, he surely ought to emphasise the truth 
that God is a thousand times more concerned for 
their salvation than they themselves are; that 
God cannot bear to let them perish; and that 
nothing is so pleasing to Him as that poor peni- 
tents in their position should come to Him with 
simple, trustful faith, even as a little child comes 
to its father. It is by grace, that:is by God’s 
free favour, and not by their own deservings, 
that they are saved at all. 

But suppose this same teacher by and by has_ 
to do with people of an opposite tendency, 
whose religion consists in mere talk about their 
“saving faith,” who justify their frequent lapses 
into meanness and impurity and ill-temper by 
persuading themselves that they had once been 
“converted,” that they are “ God’s people,” that 
they have faith in the Atonement of Christ for 
their sins, that God looking down on their lives 


looks not at their righteousness which is “ filthy 


ON ONE-SIDED TRUTHS. 105 


rags,” but at the finished righteousness of Christ 
in which they trust. Then surely that teacher 
would be bound sternly to impress on them the 
other side of the Bible’s teaching about Faith 
and Works. He would have to show them that 
character is in God’s sight the one thing of 
supreme importance for men; that the forming 
of noble character is the great purpose of God’s 
plan of Redemption; that that was no real faith 
which was not showing itself in efforts after a 
beautiful life. In a word, he would have to 
teach them as St. James taught of old, “ Faith if 
it hath not works is dead.”’! 

And no one would ever think him inconsistent 
for so teaching. It would be just the natural 
thing for him to do. Why then should it not be 
the natural thing for the inspired writers to do? 
Some people seem to expect that in Revelation 
God ought to have given usa series of absolute 
truths, each complete and perfect of itself, never 
needing to be qualified or limited in any way 
whatsoever. But should we wonder if He chose 
instead the more simple, beautiful way of 


1 James ii. 17: 


106 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE, 


humanising His truth by passing it through the 
minds of men, and thus letting these men tell it 
to their fellows in the easy, natural, human way 
in which they are accustomed to tell them other 


things? 


PART IV. 


ON STUDYING WITH THE HEART— 
DEVOTIONALLY. 





il 
DEVOTIONAL STUDY. 


AN ancient orator once laid down a motto for his 
pupils which might equally serve as a motto for 
students of the Bible— 


“ PLACERE—DOCERE—MOVERE,” 


2.c., wnterest and please in order that you may 
teach—/each in order that you may move. How- 
ever important it be to interest oneself in the 
Bible, however important thoroughly to teach 
oneself its meaning, all is but a mere preliminary 
to the great object of Bible reading—to move 
the heart, to rouse the affections toward the love 
of God and the will towards the effort after the 
blessed life. 


10g 


110 HOW TO-READ W LIABIBLE. 


In these days one sometimes sees reason to 
think that this needs to be more emphasised. 
There is a good deal of intellectual interest 
about the Bible, a good deal of discussion 
‘about inspiration and the so-called “ Higher 
Criticism,’ a good deal of information popu- 
larised about the geography and history and 
climate and habits of ancient Palestine. No 
Bible seems complete now without having a 
little volume of ‘‘ Helps” or ‘ Notes’) bound 
up with it, giving assistance towards under- 
standing its allusions and thinking oneself into 
the position of the characters depicted. And 
all this is most valuable if kept in its right 
subordinate place. But it must be so kept. 
The reader must not permit himself to call this 
“ Bible study.” It is only the intellectual side 
of tithe Itais onlyethe: preliminangs toy the teal 
object which is the spiritual feeding upon the 
Word of God. However much interest and 
information it produces, that day’s Bible reading 
is wasted which gives no light or strength for the 
battle of life—no increase in the knowledge of 


God—no stirring of the affections toward Him 


DEVOTIONAL STUDY. III 


—no vision of duty which we are resolved 
to do. 

Therefore it is with solemn purpose that we 
should approach the Bible. We should open it 
reverently, feeling that it is no ordinary book, 
but the special medium of God’s communication 
with our souls. We should cultivate a certain 
feeling of awe with regard to it, only taking care 
that this does not tend to mere superstition or 
hamper our free, intelligent study. The main 
consideration at the close of each reading should 
be, ‘What are the special lessons which the 
Holy Spirit has for me in this passage of Scrip- 
Cureci 

For this devotional study of Scripture, just as 
for the intellectual study, it is necessary to take 
pains. It is necessary as we take up the Bible 
to pause for a little, to try to detach our minds 
from the world, to prepare our hearts by a mo- 
ment of prayer and of effort to get into the right 
attitude for approaching its teaching. It is 
necessary as we lay it down to make the attempt 
at meditation on that which we have read. 


With some of us this will be no easy matter. 


£r2 HOWSTO READ TAESBIBICE, 


The mind will try to wander off, and it will 
require a firm, deliberate, persistent effort to 
form the habit of keeping our attention fixed 
even for the few minutes that we can devote to 
it. Do not be discouraged, reader, because of 
that. Remember it is as hard for many others 
as it is for you, and that the discouragement of 
failure is not peculiar to yourself. Kemember 
that God is in sympathy with the effort. He 
knows it is not easy for you, and He is ready to 
help you. Remember, too, that many to whom 
it was once as difficult and discouraging have 
by prayer and pains and perseverance won that 
habit of earnest, attentive meditation which is 
now to them such a strengthening and refreshing 
of their souls. 

Again, let me anticipate the objection which I 
fear will be frequent, that you are not an idle 
person with abundant leisure for study and 
meditation, and that you cannot cive the time 
that is necessary for all this. Much time is not 
necessary. There are very few who cannot 
devote a quarter of an hour daily to a matter 


of such vital importance to their religious life, 


DEVOTTONAL, STUDY. 1h Be) 


and even in that time, if no more can be had, 
it is possible to do all that is suggested. What 
is really needed is not so much more time, but 
more realising of the importance of this, and 
more earnest resolution in carrying it out. Pray 
that this may be granted to you. “Ask, and ye 
shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and 


it shall be opened unto you.” 
8 


ine 
“ ACQUAINT THYSELF WITH GOD.” 


“HOw can I learn to trust God? How can I 
learn to love Him and enjoy His presence as 
some people seem to do?”’ Which of us is there 
with any reality in his life who has not cried that 
cry again and again ? 

Perhaps it may help you, reader, to ask you 
another question, in reply—How did you learn 
to love and trust your own nearest and dearest— 
your father or mother, your wife, your husband, 
your intimate friend? Was it not that you 
learned to KNOW them by constant intercourse 
—that slowly, by degrees, their character was 
revealed to you, and thus you got to love them 
so, that you would give your very life for them, 
you got to believe in them so, that this day you 


would fearlessly trust your all in their keeping? 
II4 


TIE LI WANTS BIBT or 3 fo 0 SI slog AS Me EA ENO 9 eel ad 


Well, it is just in the same way you must learn 
to love and trust God. There is only one way 
for learning to love or trust anybody, God or 
man, dy learning to know them, by becoming 
intimately acquainted with thetr characters. 

Therefore must this be the prominent purpose 
in all your reading of Scripture—you must study 
the Bible and especially the Gospels, not chiefly 
to understand doctrines and explain prophecies, 
and be wise in religious theories; no, but first 
and chiefest of all to acquaint yourself with God, 
to understand God’s character, to get into touch 
with the heart of Jesus Christ. Always remem- 
ber that kxowing God has the same meaning as 
knowing your friend—an acquaintance with His 
character, such as must win your affection and 
esteem: ) [he chief; object tof the Bible is to 
impart this. And this is the thing above all 
others that is of vital consequence to you, this 
will be your joy and peace if you can attain to it. 

Surely the attainment cannot be impossible to 
him who prayerfully and earnestly sets himself 
in his Bible reading to know God. In the Old 
Testament he finds the growing revelation of a 


116 TZ OVATE OUR EAD STIPE AALD Las. 


Father pitying His children, firmly visiting their 
offences with the rod, yet pleading and striving 
with them that they should not destroy them- 
selves. Is it hard to love and reverence such an 
One as that? In the New Testament he finds 
the fuller manifestation in the great, tender, 
large-hearted Man—who scorned none but the 
shams and hypocrites, who never thought of 
Himself from the cradle to the Cross, where He 
laid down His life for the sake of His brethren. 
Is it hard to trust Jesus Christ of Nazareth when 
you get to know Him? Is it hard to care for 
One of whom such beautiful, helpful stories are 
told—of sorrowful, repentant women weeping for 
very love of Him—of poor despised publicans 
with no one else to say a good word for them 
received by Him as friends—of innocent little 
children crowding round His knee—of broken- 
hearted mothers receiving back their dead—of 
troubled, friendless, weary people hanging on 
His words of loving sympathy, “‘ Come unto Me, - 
and I will give you rest”? 

Could we not reverence and love—aye, love 


enthusiastically—such a man as that if He lived 


(WACOM dell woe AIL G ODS,  ) 117 


in our midst to-day, AND IF WE KNEW HIM as 
we know our closest friend? It is the only 
thing that matters much—thus knowing God. 
It is well to know obscure prophecies, and to be 
able to solve the difficulties of the Old Testa- 
ment. It is very good to have clear views about 
Justification and Sanctification, and the Atone- 
ment for sin; but all must be held of minor 
importance to the great object of the study of 
the Bible, “to KNOW THEE the only true God 


and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” 


SOL 
“HE THAT WILLETH TO DO, HE SHALL KNOW.” 


IF you would rightly learn from your Bible the 
teaching that God designs for you, you must 
give good heed to this condition laid down by 
Jesus Christ—purity of purpose—the honest de- 
sire, at any cost, to do the right as far as you 
know “ite li-anyemanewillethwysaidshlemeato 
do God’s will he shall kzow of the teaching ” 
(John. vii. 17, R.V.)..* The ‘same’ truth as’ to 
the connection between knowing and doing is 
frequently stated elsewhere in Scripture. ‘ The 
secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” ! 
The Holy Ghost “is given to them that obey 
Him.” 2 ‘Every one that Joveth is born of God 
and knoweth God; he that loveth not knoweth 
not God,’ ? &c. 


ASPcae kx Ve Ta 2'Acts v. 32. 81 John iv. 7, 8. 


118 


UM OOS ie BESS ANSI BS ES Oo Sad OBA OX fa 11g 


It is a valuable lesson—an encouraging lesson 
too—that spiritual knowledge is the reward of 
obedience; that the essential condition of profit- 
able Bible reading is not extensive learning or 
powerful intellect, or accurate scholarship in 
Hebrew and Greek—very important though they 
be—but rather this, which is within the power of 
every one of us, the honest desire to do God’s 
will when we know it. 

Have you never wondered, as you heard of 
some great scholar studying the Gospels and 
finding in them only foolishness and falsehood? 
Perhaps the wonder may be here explained. Or 
have you never envied some uneducated old man, 
some simple humble woman whose Bible was a 
daily profit and delight, who could see more 
clearly and make you feel more effectively the 
fatherhood of God and the beauty and nobleness 
of Jesus Christ than many a brilliant trained 
theologian? Did the question arise in your 
heart, ‘How knoweth this man letters, having 
never learned?” or did you understand the great 
law of spiritual knowledge revealed by Christ— 
“ He that willeth to do, he shall know ”’? 


120 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE, 


Live truly if you would see truly. That is the 
golden rule for the student of Holy Scripture. 
There are states of the soul in which (if I may 
say it) God seems unwilling to reveal to us His 
truth, even though we know the words of the 
Bible from beginning to end. If we are wilfully 
indulging some evil habit—selfishness, unchari- 
tableness, laziness, impurity—if we desire more 
to be orthodox than to be good; if we care more 
for reading God’s truth than for doing it; if we 
contend for our own little notions about that 
truth with sharpness and bitterness—then we are 
unfit to'learn the truth. [hese-are the things 
that blind men’s eyes and make their ears dull of 
hearing the teaching of the Spirit of God. Let 
us care, above all things, that ours, if not the 
“honest azd good”’ heart, should at least be the 
honest heart, with all its faults humbly desiring 
to know the truth in order to do it; and there 
will grow within us a Divine intuition, a spiritual 
instinct, which is, after all, but another name for 
the Illumination of the Holy Ghost, showing us, 
as we read, the teaching of God. 


Ife 
STUDY REGULARLY. 


NO spiritual life can be healthy without a daily 
study of God’s Word. No Bible reading can be 
interesting that is not regular. If you only read 
by fits and starts at irregular intervals, when you 
have time, you must not blame your Bible for its 
want of interest to you. This must be clear to 
any one who thinks about it. When you have 
entered on the study of a book in the way 
already suggested, and have learned something 
about the author and his meaning, and his pur- 
pose in writing, and are able in some degree to 
“put yourself in his place,’ and understand the 
connection of his thoughts, you are getting into 
the right attitude for being interested in the 
book. But, of course, if you fail to read it regu- 


larly, all these clear outlines forming in your 
[21 


122 LOW" O TREADS FLD BL 


mind become blurred again, and the book must 
lose its interest and its usefulness. The Bible is 
in nowise peculiar in this. The most fascinating 
novel, if it had to be read by fits and starts, and 
with long intervals between the readings, would 
soon become very wearisome taskwork. 

Let us be honest, and confess that our excuse 
about want of time is but an excuse. Even ten 
minutes of honest study every day would be an 
important help to our lives. Does it not almost 
seem at times asif God must get tired of our lazi- 
ness in this matter, as if He were saying—‘‘l 
want to fill your life with spiritual blessing by 
means of your Bible reading, but you will not 
give me time to do anything for you. I want to 
feed you full with the ‘ children’s bread,’ yet you 
scarce get even the crumbs that fall from the 
Master's table. >) Reader, Jét: us try.to, besinvear. 
nest. Let us determine in God’s strength to 
trample down under our feet this laziness that is 
so spoiling and impoverishing our lives. Let us 
decide—“ this day I begin a regular systematic 
study of my Bible, and by God’s help I will keep 
to it and make time for it. 


Ve 
STUD VeRDRAGTICALLY, 


“MAKE it the first morning business of your 
life,” says Mr. Ruskin, “to understand some 
part of the Bible clearly, and make it your 
daily business to obey it in all that you do 
understand.” 

We have already thought about the need of 
earnest devotional meditation on the daily pas- 
sage of Scripture. By means of it the emotions 
will be called into play—love, or gratitude, or 
awe, or fear, or indignation against the treach- 
erous wiles of the devil. Encourage this exercise 
of the emotional side of your nature. We have, 
most of us, too little of it in our spiritual life. 
But value above all the practical side, the 
exercise of the wz// with regard to the Scripture 
before you. Seek in it for some indications of 


your duty. Make every meditation end with 
. 123 


124 HOW TOUR LAD MLE EO LOL: 


a resolve. When, by means of your daily Bible 
reading, God reveals any duty to your soul, 
resolve that you will do that duty as quickly as 
you can, however unpleasant it may be. It is 
thus men keep open to their hearts the avenue 
for the “spirit. of Gods Youshave mosriontero 
expect any further revelation from Him till you 
have decided to attend to that one, for any 
revealed duty that is neglected becomes an 
obstacle blocking up His path. When that is 
attended to you will soon get further revelations. 
Every good deed you do will be rewarded by 
the discovery of another to be done, and the 
desire to do it; and as each is done ‘the love 
of God’s will will be growing in your heart, 
and the promise of Christ will be verified in 
your experience, “If any man love Me he will 
keep My word, and My Father will love him, 
and we will come to him and make our abode 
with him.’’?) «| Blessed gareetheyathatesiearat te 
Word of God and keep it.” 


Nel: 
STUDY PRAYERFULLY. 


THE mere injunction to prayer I should scarcely 
think necessary for any one who desires spiritual 
profit in his Bible reading as I assume the 
readers of this book to do. But it may be well 
to offer a suggestion as to the method of this 
prayer. First, I think a quick effort to realise 
the Divine presence and an earnest lifting up 
of the heart in some such words as are written 
below; then the careful study of the appointed 
portion seeking the lessons which God designs 
for you, especially seeking any light on God’s 
character or your own duty, and then, as far as 
may be, TURNING THE PASSAGE ITSELF OR 
Ciel bk we tOUGH TS nA TT ARISE: 4EROM<LE 
INTO PRAYER. This latter, I think, is of the 


greatest importance. Bible study thus becomes 
125 


126 HOW WOCREAD MATE BIBLE. 


a real communion with God. God and man are 
opening their hearts to each other. God is 
speaking to the man in His Word. The man 
is speaking back of the very things that God 
has told him. It is just what conversation, what 
communion should be. And this is much more 
feasible than may appear at first sight. Indeed, 
when the reader has accustomed himself to seek 
them, not many days will pass in which he 
cannot find at least some thoughts in his daily 
reading to send back to God in the form of 


prayer. 


PRAYERS. 


ComME, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, 
And lighten with celestial fire. 


7 


Lord, open Thou mine eyes that I may behold 
wondrous things out of Thy law. 


i 
Sanctify me through Thy truth, Thy Word 
is truth. 
kk 
Blessed Spirit of Truth, guide me into all truth. 
ik 
Let the meditation of our hearts be acceptable 


in Thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our 


Redeemer. 
127 


128 TLOW LOTR PADIS ITI BLD ee 
ik 

O Lord Jesu Christ our God, open Thou the 
ears and eyes of my heart that I may hear Thy 
words and understand and follow Thy command- 
ments, for I am a stranger, O Lord, upon the 
earth ; O hide not Thou Thy commandments 
from me (S¢. Chrysostom). 


oy 


May it please Thee, good Lord, to grant us 
increase of grace to hear meekly Thy Word, and 
to receive it with pure affection, and to bring 
forth the fruits of the Spirit. 


i 
Blessed Lord, who has caused all Holy Scrip- 


tures to be written for our learning; grant that 
we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, 
learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, 
and comfort of Thy Holy Word, we may em- 
brace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of 
everlasting life, which Thou hast given us in our 


Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. 


WORKS s DY a see Roe NeoVLyY DH sBeDr LED. 





ELEVENTH EDITION, MAKING SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND. 
127 pp. Cloth, 50 cents. 


How We Got Our Bible. 


WITT, LIGHT TLLUSTRATION S, 


OPINIONS OF ‘THE PRESS. 


Letter from the Bishop of Derry. 
PALACE, DERRY, Jan., 1886. 

I can safely say that my attention was throughout stimulated, 
and that my interest never flagged from the first page to the last. 
There are few scholars who may not learn from Mr. Smyth... . 
There are few works of the same class more calculated to help the 
ordinary readers to value their Bible, and to thank the Providence 
which has so marvellously preserved and given it into their hands, 

WILLIAM, DERRY AND RAPHOE, 


It gives much interesting information with admirable simplicity. 
ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 


This little volume is indispensable to the Bible reader who 
wishes to have in small compass an account of ancient manuscripts 
and early versions. It supplies a felt need.— 7he Christian. 


We have seldom met with a better written digest of the history 
of our English Bible. It might honestly have been presented to 
the public as a five-shilling volume.— Sword and Trowel. 


In these pages a flood of light is thrown on the sources of our 
English version, most valuable in answer to questions raised by 
the new revision.— Word and Work. 


This volume is partly historical, partly bibliographical, and 
partly critical, . . . Anybody can understand it, and every- 
body would be better for the thoughtful study of it. 

Christian Advocate. 


Gives an excellent and comprehensive account for popular 
reading of the ancient manuscripts of the Bible, and the Versions 
of Wycliffe, Tyndale, and other translators. 

The Christian World. 


WORKS BYST i PATER SONGS NY LAID lola. 


It ought to find its way into our Training Colleges, Bible 
Classes, and Upper Classes in Schools.—LZcclestastical Gazette. 


This little book deserves the attention of the large number of 
professing Christians who cannot devote the time to the larger 
histories of our English Bible.—Presbyterian Churchman. 


The book is a fine study of the history of the Bible, and should 
be read attentively and with profit.—Pudbishers’ Circular, 


This very interesting little work cannot fail to be highly 
. appreciated.—WVorthern Whig. 


This is a capital little hand-book on the history of the Bible, 
which should be in the hands of every teacher and preacher. 
The Primitive Methodist World. 


The author has done good service by this most interesting and 
instructive little book.— Zhe Messenger. 


Mr. Smyth possesses the true teaching instinct. . . . We 
have never before seen so much valuable information on the 
subject conveyed in so portable a form, and in such clear and 
interesting style.-—Duslin Daily Express. 


This book supplies a real need.— Christian Commonwealth. 


This is altogether an admirable little book. . . . Those 
who wish to get a most interesting introduction to the whole his- 
tory of manuscripts and translations, and the modern rules and 
methods of investigating them, cannot do better than provide . 
themselves with this interesting, scholarly, and very concise 
summary.— Dublin Evening Mail, 


WORKS BY | SPATERSON: SMYTH? B.D? <LE: D: 


SECOND EDITION. 222 pp. Cloth, $1.00. 


How God Inspired the Bible. 


Thoughts for the Present Disquiet. 


OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 


A scholarly and cultured attempt to calm the minds of those 
who, in the favorite phrase, are *‘ trembling for the ark.”’ 
Literary World. 


Wise and liberal. . . . Will be acomfort and help to very 
many.— Scottish Leader. 


This is a book we are glad to see—just the book we have been 
wanting to see—the very thing for those who have been brought 
up in the traditional beliefs about the Bible, but who in this day 
of criticism and disquiet feel as if they were in danger of losing 
their faith in the Bible altogether. 

We lay this book down with a restful feeling, and with thank- 
fulness for its teaching. It is sure to make its way and likely to 
be a blessing to many.—JZethodist Recorder. 


To face this question requires courage. But the author is not 
at all lacking in courage. The very first feature of the book is 
the courageous love of truth, the manifest conviction that truth is 
the best thing, and must be spoken. Moreover, he is a master of 
method, and puts his points with clearness and precision. 

Dublin Daily Express. 


Mr. Paterson Smyth is the author of two very useful books 
before this one, and we have learned to look to him for the pre- 
cision and soberness of a true teacher. . . . Nothing could 
be imagined more wholesome for young men than thoroughly to 
understand his position.—Christian Leader. 


He has done his work wisely and well. It has required courage 
to say as much as he has said, . . . -but he is free from rash- 
ness of statement, and, above all, bold and clear as are the views 
he expresses, he has kept his pen from all that might needlessly 
shock the feelings of settled believers. . . . Weare of opinion 


WORKS DY F..URALL RS ONE DALY 1d 11s ie sg alse 





that a helping hand will be found to be here extended to some who 
are ‘‘ ready to perish”; and we believe that helping hand has not 
been extended a moment too soon.—Dublin Mail. 


A series of charmingly written chapters.—Christian World. 


Mr. Smyth writes with fulness of knowledge, and in a grace- 
ful, self-effacing style, and he undoubtedly accomplishes the very 
thing he sets himself to do, That thing is the allaying of need- 
less alarm in the breasts of unscholarly, but earnest, men and 
women.—Lxfpository Times. 


This thoroughly manly book . . . bids fair to be as widely 
read as its popular predecessors. It is transparent in its honesty, 
and has not a dull page. Needless to say, it is scholarly. 

Church of Ireland Parish Magazine. 


The fact that disquiet does exist cannot be denied, and it is 
surely the only true and brave course for Christian teachers to 
grapple with its causes, as the writer has done in this volume, and 
show a reason why it should give place to an assured conviction 
that their faith is not in vain.—Belfast Weekly News. 


Reasonable, wise, and calm.—British Weekly. 


This is a courageous and straightforward attempt to calm and 
settle minds that have been unsettled or perplexed by recent 
discussions as to the Bible. Mr. Smyth . . . puts the result 
of his reading and thinking in an easy and popular way, so as to 
meet the needs of the general Christian public.— Witness, 


The author is already well known for his popular writings on 
Biblical subjects. He is a master of his art. He addresses him- 
self to his task with rare ability, perfect candor, and a directness 
of purpose and expression that are very delightful. . . . The 
style is simple and beautiful.—Przmztive Methodist. 


An admirable treatise. It says the right things in the right 
way.—Aberdeen Free Press. 


WORKS BY JSPATERSON -SMYTH; B.D., LL.D. 


FouRTH EDITION. 216 pp. Cloth extra, $1.00. 
WITH ELEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS. 


The Old Documents and The 
New Bible. 


An Easy Lesson for the People in Biblical Criticism. 


_OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 


From Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE. 
I find the work itself most interesting. I have rarely seen the 
faculty of lucid exposition more conspicuously displayed. 


‘“T’ve known a writer who could make the story of Jack the 
Giant Killer as dry asa bone. It all depends upon the handling; 
given a man possessing the divine particulam aure and he'll 
make you breathless by reciting the multiplication table.” We do 
not assert that Mr. Smyth’s triumph in this volume is quite so 
striking as that, but it is a triumph nevertheless. The Old Docu- 
ments, by aid of a lively, natural pen, competent scholarship, and 
excellent photographic illustrations are made to lose all their repul- 
siveness for the general reader, and even at times to fascinate him 
by the depth and variety of their interest.—Sheffield Independent. 


From Rev. W. ALEXANDER, D.D., Bishop of Derry. 

Truly ‘‘ The Old Documents and the New Bible” is delightful 
reading. It is pellucidly arranged and written, sometimes witty, 
sometimes pathetic in a high degree. A most instructive book. 


This little volume is an admirable piece of work by a writer who 
is evidently thoroughly master of his subject.—Glasgow Herald. 


From the Professor of Hebrew, Trinity College, Cambridge. 
A very readable and attractive account of a subject on which 
I fear very general ignorance prevails. 


The work contains, in a compact and readable form, a vast 
amount of interesting information, and to those people whose 
opportunities for studying such subjects are limited, will be of 
considerable value.—Chester Courant. 


WORKSIBY SJOLALERSONGSM YS TAPED ee 


From Dr. LumBy, Worristan Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. 

The more correct information can be circulated on such sub- 
jects among the people, the better, and this book popularizes some 
knowledge which hitherto has been only in the hands of a limited 
number of people. 


Here may be found the salient features of recent textual 
criticism, put, so to speak, in a nutshell, and described with such 
clearness that a tyro may easily appropriate them. 

Buxton Herald. 


This work should have universal circulation. It is extremely 
interesting. It is an erudite, and yet from its contents and 
manner of compilation, a popular lesson in Biblical criticism. The 
author is well known from his previous and remarkable work, 
‘* How We Got Our Bible.” —/rish Times, 


It is an attempt to bring within the reach of all intelligent 
people a knowledge of the fundamentals of what is called ‘‘ Biblical 
Criticism,” and the present work is a remarkable instance of 
success in the popular exposition of matters which have hitherto 
been confined to the province. of scholars.—Carlisle Patriot. 


From Rev. Dr. SALMON, Provost Trinity College, Dublin. 

I think I may venture to predict a great sale, for it is emi- 
nently valuable, and contains a quantity of information which 
until now has not been popularized. 


Just the book that is wanted—wanted in the school, wanted 
in the home, and wanted in the study.—omzlist. 


This is precisely the book that very many of our teachers have 
been looking for. We can hardly imagine a book more precisely 
meeting a present and pressing need.—Sunday School Chronicle. 


We do not know a more useful book, unless it be ‘‘ How We 
Got Our Bible,” by the same author. It is worthy of a place in 
every Sunday-school library.—Lzverpool Mercury. 


London: Dublin: 
SAMUEL BAGSTER & SONS. EASON & SON. 


New York: 
JAMES POTT & CO., 
Fourth Avenue and T'wenty-second Street. 





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